Return of the King… Of weird games that is
by Steve Parsons 
{ May 18th 2005 at 5:56PM }
Jeff Minter, the standard bearer for quirky
games from long, long ago, is back, courtesy of Microsoft.
In the Commodore 64 days, Jeff Minter produced a piece of software called Psychedelia. It was a light synthesizer. A
friend and I would spend long hours, creating animations (on a black and white TV no less, thus negating a lot of the
attractiveness) synced to music. We would record them in real time, save them, then start both tape and program at the
same time, and enjoy an extremely primitive version of what comes by default with pretty much every computer these
days.
Fast forward 20 years, and Minter gets to do the same thing on the new Xbox. There are those of us out there who would
consider this alone a reason for buying the new system. Screw the games! DOA4? HA! Bring on Minter!
Side story: Minter once signed an autograph for a friend of mine with the phrase "Your mind is my ashtray."
Nice!
The Yak is Back!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Fish Flaps @ Dec 18th 2005 9:46PM
All hail to the leader of Mutant Camels! We bessech you to show us your Divine Hairy Bush!
The Jeremy @ Dec 18th 2005 9:46PM
Wow, the story poster obviously is oblivious to the bang-up job Jeff Minter did on "Tempest 2000" during his Atari days working on the Atari Jaguar. Or his follow-up "Defender 2000". Or Minter's VLM, the "Virtual Light Machine" that came standard with the JaguarCD add-on. And let us not forget that the light machines that we take for granted in our WinAmps and iTunes was first debuted by Atari, circa 1976, as the "Video Music" machine that plugged directly into your stereo. The engineer who thought it up came up with the idea after smoking a lot of pot, as the story goes. Of course, that's how the Atari 2600 also originated from. And what about references to Minter's "Llamatron" (his version of Robotron 2084)? Or Minter's work on the PocketPC platform? Its not like he's been sitting on his duff in Wales the past twenty years counting llamas.
bokabunara @ Dec 18th 2005 9:46PM
He seems to have signed a lot of autographs that way... (This was ofcourse back in the day when he did work for Atari for a "will work for a Mazda" mantra, before he moved back to the UK and made games for booz (and other things)...