The Wizard Of Gaming Psychedelia Is Back On His Bullshit
If it were possible to be both an institution and an underdog, Jeff Minter is both. It may be the last of the first single-player shooters in video games. A teenage autodidatta che programmava, è enters the far part of the della fiorente scene dello sviluppo in giochi fai-da-te del Regno Unito nei primi anni '80, creando surreali giochi per computer fatti in casa inspire ai classici giochi arcade, in gran parte da only. Unlike most of his colleagues at the time, that is what he has been doing ever since. For 40 years.
His latest game, Akka Arrh , has just been released, reuniting him with Atari, the company for which he made one of his most famous and brilliant games: Tempest 2000 , 1994's powerful and high-tech re-interpretation of the already hypnotizing 1981 arcade machine. Minter and Atari have had their ups and downs over the years, but something still holds them together. In this case, it's a rare out-of-print arcade game that was thought lost for years and would be too difficult to release.
“Only one person has a working copy; he has coins and doesn't want ROM,” Minter said in a video call from Wales, where he lives in a remote countryside with a flock of sheep, a llama, a donkey and his life partner, and Ivan who works. Giles Zorzin (Minter loves llamas, as well as camels, sheep, moose, goats, and all manner of hoofed animals, and he takes every opportunity to incorporate these animals into his play. His company is called Llamasoft.) He is a friendly, messy boy. man. , a long-haired 60-year-old man from the English Midlands with generational humor who was raised on Monty Pythons and recreational drugs – the kind of humor you'd expect in a pub in a leather coat spoke of progressive dark rock. he I saw piles of game controllers and musical gear, guitars, and the poster for the 1983 game Attack of the Mutant Camels .
Anyway, back to Akka Arr . The ROM is finally out - posted by "someone who fixed [that guy's] machine" - and now you can play it (along with Tempest 2000 and many other classics) as part of the awesome Atari 50 compilation. Attractive design - players control the tower in the center of the screen, destroying incoming enemies, using arrows to illuminate the petals of a very beautiful image resembling a lotus flower. When enemies get too close, they charge into the sanctuary, and the game's main (and somewhat annoying) trick is leveling up to fend them off.
Minter liked the look and when Atari asked him to adapt something from their back catalog, he agreed. But it's not a chore like the Bura rework.
"It's not that difficult," he said. “The problem is, it's not interesting enough. Basically, this thing failed field tests, and I don't think it's just because it's too heavy. The game progresses quickly, as does Mainter's favorite classic, Eugene Jarvis' Robotron . The problem is that it's not exciting enough to bring back players. There is something missing.
Long sought loss. "I literally had to have some surgery," Minter said. He slowed down the game to make it more fun to play at home and started playing around with the designs. Minter works spontaneously, repeating designs in real code.
“Basically, I have to feel it,” he said. "Because of that, I worked with different ideas of how the game could work, how I could improve it, and for centuries I was aiming for nothing. After a few months, I finally made a breakthrough.
What he came up with was a cheeky reversal of the crazy arcade games he was known for: "a brain shooter, almost like a puzzle game". Instead of burning panels to destroy enemies, players drop bombs that trigger a chain of Missile Command- style explosions. Each new bomb resets the score multiplier, so the idea is to use as few bombs as possible. Every enemy killed by a bomb gives you a projectile that can be used to destroy different types of enemies. Bullets do not reset the multiplier, but are limited, so you must use it with the same caution. The new Akka Arrh is an arcade shooter where you have to shoot as little as possible.
Minter has also made the game "more unbalanced", resulting in sudden invasions of lower level enemies, short bursts of high-tech BPM action, unlike the tactical gameplay measured above, with more beautiful music, and a distinct signature. abstract. . It's a very strange and addicting game, far more intricate, layered, and complex than the original, or indeed most of Mainer's works. Each level is a puzzle to solve and a challenge to survive.
That's not to say it's not immediately recognizable as a Minter game, however, from its bright and vibrant neon color scheme, to its scrolling text with dark hints and banter, and its general invitation for players to enter. Zen. . Over four decades, Minter has created dozens of similar games, but Akka Arrh is one of the most original and the best.
There is no certainty that Minter will work with Atari again. After Tempest 2000, Minter moved to California to work for Atari for a few years, but he hated it.
"You could tell I didn't like it because I went there in 1994 and came back in 1997 to live in Wales again with the sheep and mind my own business again," he said.
The iconic gaming brand has changed several hands and leadership over the years, and the people who controlled Atari weren't always kind to their creators. After playing a few Minter games on personal computers as a kid, I found work with Tempest 2000 , but nothing like this. The Minter game was designed for the Atari Jaguar console. The PlayStation game I play is called Tempest X3 , which is Mainer's middle finger.
"I made one of Jaguar's best-selling games, and as a gift Atari changed the game enough to disinherit me, so I released it on a better platform under a different name", Minter laughs. With regret. "I actually spoke to the programmer a few years later and he told me he was specifically instructed to change it just enough to 'reduce the tax burden'. Isn't that amazing?
Tempest 2000 by Llamasoft, Space Giraffe , Moose Life , and Polybe .
Minter couldn't leave his classics alone. He made the sequel Tempest 3000 for the obscure Nuon platform. He revived the idea of the visually dense, chameleon-like Space Giraffe for the Xbox 360. In 2014, perhaps as revenge for the Tempest X3 , he created an (amazing) unlicensed spiritual sequel for the PlayStation Vita called TxK . Atari was not pleased and threatened him with legal action, blocking new releases on other platforms.
It's amazing Minter and Atari managed to work through all of this bickering. He's not exactly forgiving, but he's pragmatic about it.
“Besides, it's better to work with them than against them, right? He says. “And I love working on some of their catalogs. There are beautiful things to play with. And at least I can do it like I currently get paid. The two parties agreed to settle their differences on TxK and make it the official sequel to Tempest 4000. “I'm still not going to pay them any money. What will they do?"
Minter said he struggled to make enough money from the Llamasoft-published version of the original game and had to deal with marketing, which he hated. Commissioned by Atari, he didn't have to think about anything and was paid according to the finish line. He dreams of earning enough money to self-finance his dream project: Space Giraffe 2 in virtual reality.
" The Space Giraffe is probably the best thing we've ever done," he said. "And bringing that to VR is going to be a convergence of everything I've done throughout my career. So [I could be] falling apart, tired and tired.
You mean retired? “I will never retire completely. I will always do something. It would be nice not to worry about blood money anymore."
Significantly, Minter couldn't imagine a world in which he wouldn't code. He has played this game his entire adult life and it is very personal to him. He was attracted to abstract games because he was not good at art, but he was good at math and procedural descriptions of things, and he liked creating striking effects. "I like to fight for the unreal!" He says. "What I like most about virtual reality is that you can get as far away from real reality as you can." But his playing is far from impersonal, as he fills it with his voice, speaking directly to players in passages of text that express his sense of humor.
"I love doing these things!" he laughed. “Actually, I should take some. If you don't score a single point in a level, it means you have the Boris Johnson Honesty. But I have to remove the political stuff. I just appreciate it. [...] It's just me sitting around doing nothing."
Apart from games, Minter has a long history of writing outlandish music visualizations. He wrote one on the Xbox 360 dashboard and enjoyed competing with others in the render stage. Longtime PC WinAMP music player users may remember its test audio file, which proudly declared, "That sure smacks of a llama!" This is a reference to Minter.
"Yes, that is my dark claim to fame," he said. “I am a llama. And apparently they kicked my ass. (Another dark claim to fame is creating the visuals for the Nine Inch Nails song in the game Polybius .)
When asked about his love of animals, Minter becomes somewhat shy and sentimental. Their appearance in the game started as a joke - replacing AT-ATs in the Star Wars clone games with camels - but they seem to have a real spiritual connection to the beast.
"If you treat them like pets and not pets, they will socialize like cats or dogs," he says. “Being close to them is also very comforting. If you're feeling a little stressed, you won't feel as stressed when you go out and kiss a big wool sheep.” He spoke wistfully of footage of his bleating sheep, Jerry, and his sheep. use in his play "Jerry is our oldest sheep. He is over 15 years old now, that's a long time for a lamb, and he just lost his brother. So yeah, it's great to hear 'baa' and years from now I'll be listening to it and think of Jerry."
In a sense, Jeff Minter has always been out of date. He pioneered many technologies, from DVDs to smartphones and virtual reality. But in another sense, he's frozen in time: he refuses to believe that his game, or the way he makes it, really has to change from that magical moment in the early '80s when he made his debut. The moment when anything seemed possible and a new kind of art appeared before his eyes.
"It was amazing," he recalls. "You go to concerts, meet people playing games, meet other programmers, go to a bar and get mad at them or play with them. Really, those days were so naive and creative. Everything was so new.
“I often describe it this way: Imagine living in a time when there was no music, and then in your life someone finds music. And the first to sing songs and create a group. Imagine how great that would be! That's how I felt in the first days. And it appears out of nowhere .
Akka Arrh is available now on Atari VCS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.
