Llamasoft And The Space Giraffe

Google Tech Talks
March 6, 2007

ABSTRACT

Jeff "Yak" Minter has been developing video games from the Sinclair Spectrum era on up through the present day. If you were alive in the 8-bit years, you've probably played one of his games: Llamatron, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Gridrunner and Idris Alpha were among the better-known ones. If you were one of the 30 people to buy an Atari Jaguar, you probably bought his "Tempest 2000" and "Defender 2000" cartridges. And if you own an Xbox 360, you've also seen his work: the builtin music visualizer is his creation. His current project is an XBox Live Arcade game temporarily titled "Space Giraffe", which is an attempt to bring the classic Atari game Tempest...

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• google
• howto
• llamasoft
• space
• giraffe

[rmatheso]

Nice to see Jeff Minter go over his career like that and give some insight towards his philosophy on game-making. I've wrapped Space Giraffe and the game is really good once you figure out how the game works.

[rabkoi]

Jeff Minter = cool

chill out rounds instead of boss fights, now thats what I like! :-))

[robzeduk]

@kitwalker2006 What game is better? I also play other types of games - but that's not what Jeff does - he does fast, graphically rich arcade games very well.

[robzeduk]

@kitwalker2006 I don't think so - there are plenty of innovations in his games. There are only a handful of styles of game - what he does is innovate to make his games very playable. I, for one, appreciate the huge amount effort and care of his games.

[kitwalker2006]

Jeff Minter is a plagiarist. Never had an original game idea in his life. Criticizes other game types but all he ever came up with were sideways scrolling shoot-em-ups. Basic stuff. Spent his life getting high while churning out crap to feed his habit. His early stuff was all the same, just change the sprites from a camel to a minotaur and voila! Nothing innovative just the same old formula.

[QPRDVD]

What a legend!

[abilify10mg]

so many things have happened since the 80's.i used to have a commodore 64.i remember the camel games and gridrunner.thanks jeff

[archon808]

Well I did play his Tempest 2000 as loud as it would go, to piss off my neighbors. It worked.

[3drobotmonster]

It's so great to see the guy talk about these old games. He was one of my heroes when I was in my teens.

I grew up on the C64 games by Jeff, absolutely loved them. Nothing beats Revenge of the mutant Camels for me. Seeing him talk about his work is exactly how I hoped he would be like. Totally absorbed into the weird world of his games.

The games world needs more people like Minter and less of the corporate crap that these large companies try to feed us.

Thanks for sharing this beasty!.

[ShapeyFiend]

"P*ss off Dell!" Hehehe.

[camhottylover]

6 dislikes?

To you people -

May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits!