timppu: I feel Jeff Minter is/was a legend back in the day mainly in UK and maybe rest/parts of the Europe. For some reason I am not so surprised Amerikanos don't necessarily recognize him (at least that well), similarly like they may recognize Richard Garriott or Chris Roberts or Hideo Kojima or Roberta Williams. Did Jeff even make games for the popular American systems like TRS-80 or Apple IIc or IBM PCjr or early PC-compatibles? (I guess Commodore 64 was also quite popular in America but to me it always seemed Americans were more Apple IIc and IBM PC people; even Amiga seemed relatively rare in the US).
I recognize his name from my childhood as "didn't he make some sort of quirky and comical mutant llama or camel shooters that were quite popular in Commodore 64 in the 80s?", but frankly even my expertise on him stops there (I never played the said shooters as I never owned either Commodore 64 nor ZX Spectrum). I actually saw his face the first time now when I googled for him.
Either way, an interesting collection which I will definitely get at some point (just to educate myself on what games exactly that bloke did; well Tempest was one of my favorite arcade games, if Jeff is resposible for the Tempest2000 remake of it), and yes I knew the answer to the question whether he ever made RPGs. For all i knew, he was known for simpler action games, he was not Lord British in that regard.
C64 was the most popular home PC in the U.S. in the 80s, but I'm dubious that Minter's games got a lot of distribution over here. I didn't know anyone who had Gridrunner or its sequels, or the Mutant Camels games. I actually got into his stuff with Tempest 2000, because I was one of the idiots who had a Jaguar and that was clearly the best game (sadly Defender 2000 didn't work out as well). He probably hindered his exposure by being so independent-minded and favoring obscure systems over mainstream console development. I was actually shocked when he did Polybius for the PS3, but I think this collection will do more than anything to raise his overall profile by just showing so much of what he did in context and making it clear that he has his own style.
Ummm no, it also had "Alien Vs. Predator" which was well acclaimed and was actually the original platform "Rayman" was made for.
I had NEVER heard of Tempest before Tempest 2000 and had to play the latter after reading in a gaming magazine all the so-so reviews then read Ed Semirad's review giving it a 10. It made me VERY curious to play it so I rented it. I don't regret owning a Jaguar but I do regret not getting more for it.
I had wanted to get the CD add-on but was going to buy it in stores. Little did I know that Atari were IDIOTS and made it mail-order.
dtgreene: You know, that is a *really* rude answer. I will not hang my head in shame, as I feel that you should be the one to do so, given your rather rude response to a legitimate question.
amok: I am a rude person, do you want me to pretend to be someone I am not?
And Jeff MInter is one of the greates of game design history. He is one of the people who defined what games can be. Anyone with a passing interest in gaming and classical gaming should know about him, same as with (off the top of my head) Shigeru Miyamoto, Roberta Williams, Toru Iwatani, Allan Alcorn, Chris Avellone, David Braben, Yoshitaka Amano, Todd Howard, Julian Gallop, Takashi Tezuka, Ken Levine, Brian Fargo, John Carmack, Yu Suzuki, Sid Meier and many others. It is thanks to people like Jeff Minter and these that we have the games that we play today... including RPG's.
I think you should get this, not for the games, but for the documentary
Ummm honestly for me it is Yu Suzuki, Yuji Naka and a few of the other more Japanese ones. Sorry but I won't recognize most of these others as the Buster Keaton, D.W. Griffin, Sergei Eisenstein and Akira Kurosawa of the gaming industry. I recognize Miyamoto's unparalleled talent for gameplay but that he can't storyboard his way out of a paper bag and so can't create that whole package. That being said all of what he has created for the early Mario and Zelda are quite compelling, I just don't depend on him for a great, original narrative.
Kojima is bar none, the best Political fiction writer out there for the storylines of MGS and MGS2.
I hope Minter getting a doc. like this will see Yu Suzuki, Yuji Naka and Chieko Kodama receive one accordingly. I would honestly LOVE a game writer compilation series with Junko Kawano, Hironobu Sakaguchi and others getting in depth on them documentary style. I want to hear about their childhood, their interests, interviews with friends and family, the works. If we don't do this now we will lament it later.
How many people who pioneered music or movies have we lost the chance to get to really know and be inspired by or even improved by accordingly?
Love Civilization and started with the first, still don't feel comfortable comparing
