nuskadamo

[finalmente... per i prossimi giorni sarò molto impegnato]

Prior to purchasing Llamasoft: the Jeff Minter Story, my knowledge of who Jeff Minter was didn't go much further than what he'd done with Tempest 2000. Between the psychedelic visuals of that game and the way he's portrayed in the promotional material for this collection, i had built up this idea in my head of someone who adopted that "live fast, die young" rockstar lifestyle, even if merely in kayfabe. A bit of a british John Romero or Itagaki of sorts, especially considering how the cult around his personality came to be long before both those guys, when videogames were still a long way from being considered a proper art form by the mainstream, and developing any kind of reputation as an author would require a certain level of eccentricity. Well, Jeff Minter is eccentric alright, in the polar opposite manner i had anticipated.

There is a lot to be said about the quality of their work when it comes to emulating games past a certain complexity, but it's undeniable Digital Eclipse did a splendid job documenting the history of Atari and Mortal Kombat in their respective collections, and i'm delighted to report that their spotless track record (at least within my limited sample size) continues on.
Minter isn't made to be as someone who may have faced soul-crushing hardships in life (and if he did, they seemingly weren't relevant enough to be brought up here), nor he has reached the levels of fame and wealth that would challenge a person's integrity, he's just a very british feller with a passion for music and exotic animals, who creates games he'd like to play.
Halfway through the interactive documentary i started wondering: "this isn't a corporation that went through many ups and downs like Atari. or a long-lasting series that had a massive impact in the gaming industry, this is just one silly llama papa, how are they gonna keep things interesting until the end?" The short of it is that, sometimes, all it really takes to create a compelling story is asking the right person the right questions.

So, how does Jeff Minter's gameography stack up among the greats? To keep it 100, the quality control is a bit all over the place, especially if we take his earlier stuff from the VIC-20/C64 era in consideration, featuring plenty of high highs and just as many low lows, with the common denominators from the beginning of his career to this very day being the pick-up-and-play philosophy and the unique psychedelic visuals. Difficulty skews on the higher side, even with how often you're presented with a fairly robust set of customization options to make things more accessible, like drones to assist you in battle, starting off with extra lives and perks more specific to a game's mechanics. There's virtually no lore in the games themselves, not even a single paragraph giving you the story premise, but if you flip through the pages of most manuals you'll find at least one or two fat pages of unformatted text full of alien shenanigans that are actually interconnected between games. I wish i could tell you more about all that nonsense, but i haven't taken the time to read it just yet.
For more specific commentary, i've written individual reviews for nearly every game present in this collection on my Backloggd!

Going in, and i'm not too proud to admit this, i was somehow disappointed by how this collection included "just" ol' vanilla Tempest 2000, rather than any future updated version or the relatively new Tempest 4000, since i already played the Jaguar classic (the ONLY Jaguar classic??) on Atari 50 last year. This despite being fully aware that Jeff wasn't actually involved in any of the future versions, and that Tempest 4000 is recent and complex enough where it would still make sense to be a separate purchase. With that said, and i don't know if it's because this time around i didn't play the game with a nitpicky Backloggd review costantly brewing inside my head, or if having all this extra context about the man behind the magic built this unspoken emotional connection, or if simply because i got a lot better at the game out of nowhere, compared to when i last booted up the ROM... but i'm glad i got to re-experience Tempest 2000. It's dope.

Digital Eclipse created a remake for Gridrunner, Jeff Minter's first true hit, going for the Pac-Man Championship Edition minimalistic light show look they also adopted in Atari 50's Yar's Revenge remake, an aesthetic choice that fits much better here. The gameplay is nearly identical to the original, so much so that you can, at any moment, switch between the old and the new graphics with the push of a button. The only true improvements i could notice are a visual warning right before the laser below you goes off, a progress bar, that really doesn't add much to the proceedings, and a hard mode for those who, unlike me, have the reflexes for a bigger challenge. I understand why vanilla Gridrunner got picked for the remake treatment over the sequels, but i would have personally preferred if Matrix received the new coat of paint instead, as that game is essentially just Gridrunner, with a lot more going on.

Gridrunner wasn't the only remake included in this collection, to my surprise, unless you want to pedantically challenge the notion that Colourspace is a game to begin with. For reasons that escape me, this one didn't get a separate entry, instead you can access the new features directly from the original ROM. Colourspace is a program that will generate all sorts of colors and shapes on screen according to the user's inputs and settings, that's pretty much it, and while something like this may come off as quaint through our modern lenses, for the time it was quite an out-of-the-box idea for a piece of software, and one that Jeff Minter seems to be particularly proud of. Digital Eclipse did an impressive job adding all sorts of new features and modernizations to Colourspace, and i intend to use its psychedelic visuals as backdrop for a Youtube video i'd like to work on in the future, so on top of being a great collection of games, The Jeff Minter Story also served me in a more practical sense. Cool.

To end things, here's my current top 5, if you ever cared (and please consider that i haven't played Batalyx, Iridis and Ancipital yet):

Tempest 2000
Mama Llama
Llamatron 2112
Matrix: Gridrunner 2
Hover Bovver (the C64 version specifically. The Atari 8-Bit port is a bit shabby)

If Attack of the Mutant Camels for the Konix got finished and if Revenge of the Mutant Camels for the Amiga got included and ran better than the Atari ST they'd both be probably sandwiched between Mama Llama and Llamatron.

[recensione postata in tarda sera perché mi sento audace oggi]

Wearing the Robotron inspiration on its sleeve (i actually haven't played that one, just going off what the Yak himself said), Llamatron 2112 is a single screen twin stick shooter, featuring the best visuals out of any Atari ST present in the Jeff Minter collection, and a flawed but addicting gameplay. The background is a plain black square, which i wouldn't blame the average person for initially finding a tad basic, until they play for a bit and realize how necessary of a practical choice it is as to not overwhelm a player that is already subjected to A LOT of moving shapes and colors. Plus, it's also a (maybe un)intentional homage to the original Robotron, an arcade game from a time when the background for ALL games was a plain black square, how #retro for '91!

The enemy variety is yet again impressive, a quirk i've come to realize is not uncommon with Llamasoft games, both in their many distinct visual designs and the way they behave, but sometimes said variety might work against the otherwise straight forward flow of Llamatron as you're going through the levels for the first time, since it's not always evident which enemies are meant to be killed to progress past the level, nor if they can be killed at all, resulting in many deaths that i wouldn't hesitate to call unfair.

Another Llamasoft quirk from around this time is the option to let you get paired with a drone that will shoot off enemies on its own. It's not something i relied on too much, but i appreciate how often Jeff Minter allows players to customize various mechanics to fit their own needs. Mama Llama had a million different toggles, now that i think about it... the most i've seen so far. I wish the game hadn't been so polarizing back in the day, mainly because i would have loved for future Llamasoft titles to have cranked that aspect up to eleven, adding features like... i don't know, lowering the enemy density in Llamatron, for example. It's not like the levels are too frustrating in their current state (...ok, maybe sometimes), but a way to achieve any kind of consistent performance on the ST would be nice for a change.

One mechanic, as described in the manual, lets you press a certain button to lock the aim at an angle of your choosing while you can move in other directions, and it functioned as advertised while playing alongside the drone, during which i unexplicably could only shoot ahead of me, but when i'm going solo and i can aim in whichever direction i want at all times, rendering this feature redundant if not unpractical, pressing that button acts as a... teleporter? I'm not sure if this is an emulation bug or some sort of unadvertised modification, the Llamatron dude will assume the shape of an enemy sprite and then be teleported somewhere random on the map, usually to his death. Am i missing something here? This doesn't feel intended.

Anyway. Don't let this review made of nearly just incessant whining deter you, because Llamatron 2112 is still a good game at its core, one with a timeless simple appeal that you could pick up and play at any moment for a few minutes of mindless fun.

[questa è sicuramente l'ultima stringa di recensioni che scriverò per la collection di Jeff Minter, fidatevi di me]

Attack of the Mutant Camels
Man, what a shame. Out of all versions of this game contained in the interactive documentary, this one by far plays the best. Excellent graphics that are full of the eclectic vibes Jeff Minter is known for, but without sacrificing any of the readibility like it can often be the case, a great variety of weapons to choose from, silky smooth framerate in spite of the great amount of particles present on screen at all times and best of all... a mini-map! As good as the one in Defender, a game from nearly a decade prior! Jeff, you mad bastard, you finally pulled it off! Jokes aside, Mutant Camels sadly never got completed, because the platform it was designed for got scrapped halfway through development. There's no game over, no win condition either... Camels and other enemies just spawn indefinitely. I could absolutely see myself giving this game four stars, maybe more, if it had a proper level design, but even as a proof of concept it's fun to pick up and mess with. No score.

Revenge of the Mutant Camels
The Atari ST version of this game fixes all the issues i had with the C64 original. Not only does the camel move a lot faster and occupies less space, not only is the act of shooting in any direction you point at working as intended, but this port adds a couple new layers of complexity to the gameplay, thanks to unlockable projectiles, various kinds of bonuses, a rechargeable health bar and a CPU assist in case you may need the extra help. And! It features another cute little quirk, colloquially referred to as "running like fucking dog ass".
The in-documentary description noting that, for whatever reason, this game is displayed through an Atari Jaguar emulator had me SO eager to rant yet again about Digital Eclipse and their ineptitude at showcasing properly anything more complex than 8-bits, but no... Revenge ran like that natively. Wow. I was more than willing to look past the ugly graphics if they didn't tank the performance on top of my own eyesight, because there's a really fun game somewhere buried in here, but not at 15 frames per second. Two stars.

Revenge of the Mutant Camels 2
The linear and random level progressions from the prequel have been replaced by a 10x10 grid, which grants you a total of 100 selectable levels, each accessible by moving one space away from any tile/level you've beaten/died to. All levels will inevitably start blending in no matter where you land on the grid, even with the respectable amount of enemies and backdrops this game has to offer, but i still appreciate the sense of structure this system gives. Upgrades and consumables aren't obtainable during gameplay like in the Atari ST port, instead you can purchase them exchanging the in-game credits between levels, with their price tag increasing after each purchase to avoid relying too much on the same stuff, an approach that i personally prefer.
While i wasn't banking on Revenge 2 to control particularly better compared to its previous C64 counterpart, i sure as fuck didn't expect it to play worse. You can't crouch anymore, and when up in the air sometimes, instead of shooting straight like it usually does, your camel will somehow... give birth to other baby camels? Not even the manual makes any mention of this mechanic, maybe in the lenghty lore section, but why the fuck would you hide gameplay mechanics there? Two stars.

Voidrunner
A Gridrunner spin-off that shares so little in common with Gridrunner that you might as well have given it a completely unrelated name. Levels will have all sorts of various enemy layouts, like per usual, but the true differenciator is the way the four ships at your disposal are controlled. Sometimes they'll each point at a different corner, sometimes they'll be angled diagonally, sometimes they'll be on opposite sides of the screen, sometimes they'll move in reverse... What a creative premise for a shooter, and utilized mostly to entertaining results. So where's the catch?
The graphics in Voidrunner are a problem, and a serious one at that. Not only because they're such a simplistic approximation of what they're attempting to represent, and we're talking proper Atari 2600 nonsensical cubic abstractions here, but because of how unreadable they make the game. Between the colored line going up and down that is only relevant in certain levels, the dotted patterns in the background and the explosion particles that sometimes will spawn out of nowhere, i've found myself frequently dying without realizing what hit me, wondering in the moment if i even died at all... because the level clear animation plays exactly like the death one, just to fuck with you, i guess. Two and a half stars.

Super Gridrunner
An Atari ST conversion of Jeff Minter's most famous hit, that doesn't hit quite like one would expect.
The mechanics have been expanded upon from the original, with the new additions all making things better as far as i'm concerned. You now control a secondary ship that will slowly attach itself onto the primary one at the press of a button, and shooting while both are in the same position grants a more powerful attack. The secondary ship will not cause a game over once hit, which is objectively the correct design choice. The centipede patterns are more complex, the graphics are nicer to look at, this is ALMOST a great game... but it's also so weirdly limp. Super Gridrunner's performance isn't anywhere near as problematic as the Atari ST Revenge port, which in a way almost works against it, because this is by all means a playable game, just not one that is terribly fun.
And then there's other minor aspects, like the subdued sound design, the short but unnecessary breaks between each death, the more cramped screen size, none of these things are big deals by themselves, but combined with the slow performance they all result in Super Gridrunner being a lethargic experience. Two stars.