My exposure to Jeff Minter is honestly quite limited; I remember accessing TxK and a few other contemporary reimaginings from him in the early days of Playstation Plus and wondering what the fuck they were thinking but now, being around a decade older and learning just how much of an outlaw and champion he's been for originality and complexity I truly believe there is a lot to appreciate about this man and a lot to thank him for when it comes to pushing the envelope against the commercial.
I really like these expansive collections/interactive documentary packages from Digital Eclipse because they truly put you in the shoes of a time you may not have had the pleasure to experiencing in real time. I'm a 90s Brit, so I never really got to experience any of the craze of the Commodore 64, the rise and fall of Atari etc; I grew up on the tail end of the Mega Drive and then really found my gaming stride with the polygon era of the Sony Playstation.
Digital Eclipse's presentation and timeline truly do manage to place people like me in a temporary time capsule to really entrace ourselves in an era like we're really there in a condensed sense, which I think it genuinely amazing. I find a lot of these games stimulating and challenging and a lion's share more sheer frustrating and over-intensive but I think ultimately that is a best case scenario for love letters like these, that present a complete picture of a career or company, for better or worse.
One thing I don't like in these compilations though is the the colour footage and supplementary material tends to hype you up for a treat that either spoils later playable functions or amps you up for something you can never experience in the... well, experience. Most notably in this especially is the constant bombardment of Jaguar and 2000s+ footage in video segments where you're still running through the 80s and learning about how Minter was learning code for the Commodore 64 or Atari ST.
More importantly there's a chunk of these projects that you're shown gameplay and promo material for and, understandably, you feel excited for but they never show up. I understand not including a lot of Minter's most recent projects in an attempt to make us fund his independent creativity, but please tell me where the fuck I'm supposed to buy Trin-a-Tron after several entries detailing how it was his magnum opus of music technology and his one-year baby? Somehow I don't think I can run and buy an Atari ST and a copy for a reasonable price in our lord and saviour's 2024.
In fact, DE seems to run of out steam the second they reach his 90s era, very similarly to how they did the Jaguar in Atari 50. Even more bizarrely so is that the every ST game they present are Jaguar ports. What is featured though is an incredible look into what could have been with an early prototype of Attack of the Mutant Camels '89 for the fraudulent Konix Muilti-System that never came to be. I appreciate that it may be a matter of realistic emulation but honestly I haven't currently seen an ST game that can't be emulated at this point so I have to assume it's just that they prioritised a historical era and things get pretty dicey legally in the mid-late 90s. As such thetimline ends on the Jaguar itself with Tempest 2000, his saving grace. I wonder how feasible it would have been to include at least some further inofrmative insight on his input in the fith gen, such as Defender 2000, Tempest 3000 and his early PC efforts, as well as even further into his Minotaur Project.
That's a shame, because you would hope that getting as many of the people involved on board as possible would result in something once in a generation. That being said though, I suppose this leaves room for its final documentary advertisement for Heart of Neon; I still feel that what is on offer is more than worth the asking price and I I look forward to seeing what obscure curiosity DE deep dive into next. I also absolutely plan to engross myself further into not only the Llamasoft games here on display but the works and life of Minter himself here on out.
I really like these expansive collections/interactive documentary packages from Digital Eclipse because they truly put you in the shoes of a time you may not have had the pleasure to experiencing in real time. I'm a 90s Brit, so I never really got to experience any of the craze of the Commodore 64, the rise and fall of Atari etc; I grew up on the tail end of the Mega Drive and then really found my gaming stride with the polygon era of the Sony Playstation.
Digital Eclipse's presentation and timeline truly do manage to place people like me in a temporary time capsule to really entrace ourselves in an era like we're really there in a condensed sense, which I think it genuinely amazing. I find a lot of these games stimulating and challenging and a lion's share more sheer frustrating and over-intensive but I think ultimately that is a best case scenario for love letters like these, that present a complete picture of a career or company, for better or worse.
One thing I don't like in these compilations though is the the colour footage and supplementary material tends to hype you up for a treat that either spoils later playable functions or amps you up for something you can never experience in the... well, experience. Most notably in this especially is the constant bombardment of Jaguar and 2000s+ footage in video segments where you're still running through the 80s and learning about how Minter was learning code for the Commodore 64 or Atari ST.
More importantly there's a chunk of these projects that you're shown gameplay and promo material for and, understandably, you feel excited for but they never show up. I understand not including a lot of Minter's most recent projects in an attempt to make us fund his independent creativity, but please tell me where the fuck I'm supposed to buy Trin-a-Tron after several entries detailing how it was his magnum opus of music technology and his one-year baby? Somehow I don't think I can run and buy an Atari ST and a copy for a reasonable price in our lord and saviour's 2024.
In fact, DE seems to run of out steam the second they reach his 90s era, very similarly to how they did the Jaguar in Atari 50. Even more bizarrely so is that the every ST game they present are Jaguar ports. What is featured though is an incredible look into what could have been with an early prototype of Attack of the Mutant Camels '89 for the fraudulent Konix Muilti-System that never came to be. I appreciate that it may be a matter of realistic emulation but honestly I haven't currently seen an ST game that can't be emulated at this point so I have to assume it's just that they prioritised a historical era and things get pretty dicey legally in the mid-late 90s. As such thetimline ends on the Jaguar itself with Tempest 2000, his saving grace. I wonder how feasible it would have been to include at least some further inofrmative insight on his input in the fith gen, such as Defender 2000, Tempest 3000 and his early PC efforts, as well as even further into his Minotaur Project.
That's a shame, because you would hope that getting as many of the people involved on board as possible would result in something once in a generation. That being said though, I suppose this leaves room for its final documentary advertisement for Heart of Neon; I still feel that what is on offer is more than worth the asking price and I I look forward to seeing what obscure curiosity DE deep dive into next. I also absolutely plan to engross myself further into not only the Llamasoft games here on display but the works and life of Minter himself here on out.