Gaming companies come and go. Anyone remember Infogrames? The Atari name is still kicking around but that’s due to it being bought and sold over the years, bearing very little relation to the original company. Working Designs, Broderbund, and Epyx are long gone, Treasure and Cave are now just rights-holding entities, Squaresoft and Enix are Square-Enix, Electronics Boutique is a name GameStop puts on some of its stores, etc. There are a few holdouts like Capcom, Electronic Arts, and Konami, but the business need to grow or die has led to a lot more companies dying than growing. Remove that requirement, though, and if the stars align just right with a combination of luck and perseverance, you just might get a Llamasoft.
A long and productive history from a bit past dawn but still the early morning of gaming
Llamasoft is Jeff Minter and Jeff Minter is Llamasoft, at least in the case of the games on Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story. Starting off in 1981, Minter published a huge number of titles for the Vic-20, Commodore 64, Spectrum, and several other computers of the time. The biggest hit was Gridrunner, which got quite a few sequels on different platforms, but there were literally dozens of other games from obscurities like Hellgate to the first light synthesizers in the form of Psychedelia and Colourspace. Some were obviously inspired by hits of the time, like Gridrunner being a take on the Centipede formula, while others were unique and frequently weird. No matter how odd they got, each one had a very clear stamp of the creator’s personality in it, making for a series of games that fed a devoted and surprisingly high-profile fan base. It’s been a long journey from Deflex to Llamasoft’s latest, Akka Arrh, and while the releases aren’t as frequent as they used to be the library of over forty years of game development is well worth exploring.
Greatest Arcade Shooter Ever Made, Gridrunner++, Now Free on PC
Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is a collection of games from the very earliest days through the Atari Jaguar killer app Tempest 2000. It’s also part of Digital Eclipse’s new Gold Master series, which is a game collection and history lesson in a single package, not merely tossing the games out into the world but providing context as to why they’re important. Gaming has traditionally done a terrible job of preserving its history (anyone know where the source code for Panzer Dragoon Saga got to?) but collections like Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story show that we can do better. Like the first Gold Master title, The Making of Karateka, the Llamasoft collection contains not only forty two games but also documentation and over an hour of video interviews as well. Topping the package off is Gridrunner: Remastered running off the original code but with a shiny new visual presentation, plus the previously-unreleased Attack of the Mutant Camels ‘89 for the Konix Multi-System. AMC ‘89 has only been available by emulation (with Jeff Minter’s full blessing and encouragement) prior to the collection, and while it took thirty five years it’s finally getting an official release.
With all the time that’s passed it’s a small miracle that Llamasoft is still Llamasoft. From Space Giraffe to Polybius, Moose Life and Minotaur Arcade, the games Jeff Minter and Ivan Zorzin (the tech half of modern-day Llamasoft) are producing today are very clearly from the same mind as those on Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story. Today saw the release date for the collection announced, showing up in a few short weeks on March 13. Check out thenew trailer here.
