Two Ears, A Heart, And A Beak For Eating Honey
HIGH Holy Hell do I love the potential of the Gold Master Series
LOW …Sure feels like we should have a Jeff Minter Story Part II.
WTF The Konix Multi-System.
I don’t think there’s a franchise that I desperately wish to be successful more than Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master Series.
The videogame industry can be criticized for many, many, many things, but one of its most glaring faults is the complete indifference to its own history and preservation. I am legitimately over the moon that a port-based developer as dependable as Digital Eclipse has teamed up with a genuine videogame historian in Chris Kohler to not only preserve these important works, but tell the story behind them with such aptitude. I worry the industry is uninterested in helping this project succeed, but hopefully the sales will be strong enough to entice more stories to be shared.
The Jeff Minter Story is technically the second game in the GMS, but considering both this and The Making of Karateka share the layout and general design ethos of 2022’s Atari 50, it’s really the third. As with highlighting the accomplishments of Jordan Mechner last year, Digital Eclipse’s choice of Jeff Minter and the wonderous works of Llamasoft is both inspiring and obvious in equal measure.
For those who don’t know, Jeff Minter is the chillest dude in the history of videogames. He runs a videogame company he opened with the help of his parents, but usually he hangs out with animals on his lovely farm. When not feeding sheep, he makes weird-ass titles based on that time as a teenager he laid on the floor and blasted Dark Side of the Moon really loud. He has somehow existed as a major entity in this industry for over forty years making trippy shooters in his basement the whole time, and the fact that he’s basically still doing the same thing is the most amazing part of his story.
Having so many of his titles collected in one place is legitimately awesome, but the true value of The Jeff Minter Story is how it serves as a historical artifact not just for the work of his company, Llamasoft, but the oddity that was the British videogame scene of the ’80s and ’90s.
As a yank, I’ve never delved deeply into the backstory and libraries of home computers like the ZX-81 or the VIC-20. These machines were unbelievably primitive, and half of Minter’s genius is how he was able to deliver marginal approximations of arcade hits like Defender or Centipede on such devices. This was the time period when it was enough to make “a good Defender” as Jeff says in the documentary clips sprinkled throughout, and I enjoyed his friendly-but-blunt revisiting of old titles. One of his biggest early hits was Attack of the Mutant Camels, which he freely admits was just him having a laugh after it became a running gag that the AT-AT’s in Atari’s Empire Strikes Back videogame looked like the desert-going beasts, so he made a clone of that work with actual camels.
The layout of this documentary experience will be familiar to anyone who played either of the previous GMS titles, but essentially the games and supplemental material are delivered via a chronological timeline broken up over four chapters. Players can access the games at any time, but jumping directly there would deprive them from seeing the amazing bonus features placed around the games themselves. Box art, advertisements, game reviews from old British magazines, newsletters from the time period written by Jeff himself, along with several other kinds of fascinating historical material do a great job of enhancing the presentation.
As I said, this is all hugely illuminating and I love the format, but there’s a huge problem — It’s only half the story.
The Jeff Minter Story essentially climaxes with Tempest 2000 — debatably the work he’s best known for — but he did plenty of stuff after that! The Llamasoft game I actually have the most nostalgia for is probably Space Giraffe, and that only gets mentioned in the final documentary clip. The inclusion of Tempest 2000 doesn’t hit as hard considering it was also the pseudo main event of Atari 50.
Minter has been a gun-for-hire for decades, so the rights to many of his games are strewn about between various publishers. Many of his iPhone games no longer exist because he couldn’t justify keeping them on the iOS store with the yearly $100,000 necessary to be a iOS publisher. He’s also been a prolific VR developer in recent years, and that aspect of his career being unrepresented here is disappointing, yet understandable. Not seeing his fantastic rendition of Polybius here is a bummer.
Maybe it was a stylistic or editorial choice to posit Tempest 2000 as the crescendo for this project, but Jeff Minter has improved as a game designer in the thirty years since then. Further, modern technology has proven to be a better delivery vehicle for his particular aesthetic. To put it bluntly: I would much rather play the games from the second half of his career, which basically doesn’t exist on this compilation. I recognize the historical importance of something like Ancipital, but of the 43 games included in this release, many of them are repeated titles for multiple weird computers, and I’d probably say only about twelve or so have entertainment value beyond simply being historical artifacts.
While the collection of games on offer here can be a bit underwhelming, for people who care about the history of this artform, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is an absolute must-buy. It was truly wonderful seeing Jeff’s story fleshed out to this degree, and his reputation as a fascinating, cool-ass dude is well earned. With that said, I can’t help but feel that leaving out more than half of his career is a bit like telling the story of The Beatles and stopping at Rubber Soul. There’s a lot more to Jeff’s career after Tempest 2000, and it’s profoundly disappointing to see this exemplary piece of gaming history stop there.
That said, I guess one can’t be too mad when the biggest complaint is “I desperately wish there was more of this”.
RATING: 7 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Digital Eclipse. It is currently available on PS4/5, Switch, XBO/X/S and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PS5. Approximately 6 hours were devoted to playing the games and following the documentary, and the game was “completed” as much as it can be. Various games in the collection have local multiplayer modes, but these were not tested.
Parents: This game has an ESRB rating of T for Language. There is no official summary from the ESRB, but essentially, the rare “shit” or “damn” might be spoken in the documentary clips. Other than that, there’s zero objectionable content in this release and should be fine for most kids.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game offers subtitles and closed captioning. The text size cannot be changed. Captions can be added in the video documentary section. As far as gameplay, I don’t think many of Minter’s games have necessary audio cues. I’d call it fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: Yes, this game’s controls are remappable for each game in the collection.
He is currently attending graduate school at Pacific University seeking a Master's In Teaching with a focus on secondary social studies. From 2015-2020, Jarrod worked as a school teacher in various countries throughout Asia, and is now seeking certification to teach in his home country so a global pandemic doesn't leave him stranded again.
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