Commodore Free 24/Commodore_Free_Issue_24_2008_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.llamasoft 2

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LLAMASOFT - The Dromedary Years
(Part Two) Article By Michael Bevan

In 1980 the then 18 year old Jeff
Minter was still in unknown quantity
in the fledgling world of home
computer gaming. Within ten years
Minter had founded his own company
'Llamasoft', unleashed a catalogue of
over twenty classic 8-bit games and
the term 'Minter-esque' had entered
gaming lexicon to describe his highly
individual, uniquely psychedelic and
indeed exceptionally hairy style of
game design.

We take up our story a short while
after Jeff has submitted a small
computer program called Gridrunner to
American software publisher HES. What
happened next could never have
occurred to him in his wildest
imagination...

'A week or so later the phone rings at
4AM and I shamble out of bed to answer
the call. I was a little upset, as I'm
the kind of beast who likes to leap
out of bed at the crack of noon. On
the other end, a little blurred by
satellite delay, an American voice
ranted about some game that they've
been playing for eight hours solid.
The voice informed me that I should
expect significant monetary input.
Bemused, I made a few notes on the pad
by the phone and returned to bed.
Waking later, at a time closer to my
usual emergence, I made myself a
really strong cup of tea and
remembered some weird dream, something
about a game... went to the phone,
found the note, and was intrigued'.

Grid Runner peaked at number one in
the US software charts, much to
Minter's surprise, earning Llamasoft
not only its first US bona-fide smash
hit but a significant financial boost.
Exhausted by two years of constant
coding, Minter decided to take a
well-earned holiday to Peru to be with
the llamas. On returning to the UK
Minter would release several more Vic
20 games including Traxx (a Painter
clone) and Metagalactic Llamas Battle
At The Edge of Time (an attempt to
release a game with the silliest title
he could think of and the first to
feature his company's namesake
creature). He followed up Grid Runner
with a new sequel, Matrix, which was
also well received in the US, before
moving on to code for Commodore's new
flagship machine the C64, his own
machine a gift from HES prior to Grid
Runner's huge success. After
converting Attack of the Mutant Camels
and Matrix to the C64, and creating
the Tempest-esque Laser Zone, Minter
started work on what would become one
of his most famous games, if only in
Europe.

'I was feeling well guilty about the
fact that the camels got shot up in
AMC, as camels are in fact lovely
beasties, so I wanted to make a game
where they rose up against their evil
ZZyaxxian masters and fought back. At
the time, people were freaking out
about the fact that Manic Miner had 20
levels, which seemed like a huge
amount back then - so I decided to one
up Manic Miner and put 42 levels into
this game. I could have put more but
42 seemed like a decent number of
levels, especially as 42 is the answer
to life, the universe and everything.'

Revenge of the Mutant Camels was one
of Llamasoft's weirdest, most
psychedelic games to date, and the
first to really make use of the C64's
advanced capabilities such as
raster-interrupt techniques to produce
ultra-smooth scrolling backgrounds and
full multi-channel sound emulation
through SID. It was a hugely well
received game in its native UK,
receiving rave reviews from many
computing magazines, including a
prestigious Game of the Month accolade
from Personal Computer Games magazine.
RMC also marked the point when
Minter's games finally fully developed
the distinctive and surreal Llamasoft
iconography, containing a whole
bestiary of sheep, goats, llamas and
camels, along with the likes of flying
CND symbols, telephone boxes, Rizla
packets and Battlestar Galactica
reject base-stars.

However HES, whose partnership with
Llamasoft had proved so fruitful with
Grid Runner and Matrix, did not like
the game, and refused to distribute it
in the US, forcing Minter to develop
solely for the UK and European
markets, the only one where his games
were still attracting positive press
attention and where he was gradually
starting to accumulate a cult
following. Llamasoft's next title, the
highly entertaining comedy 'mow'-emup
Hovver Bovver was co-designed by one
of Minter's biggest fans.. his father.
Inspired by the 'Painter' concept he'd
already explored in Traxx, it was an
unexpected but very welcome addition
to the Llamasoft canon. Minter then
returned spectacularly to the shoot'em
up genre with a release that was
arguably his best piece of game design
to date.

Sheep In Space was a
horizontally-scrolling shooter
following in the Defender tradition
that featured as its unlikely hero an
Interstellar Space Sheep. The player
piloted their extremely agile ovine
between two opposing planet surfaces,
aiming to prevent enemies from
building up charge on a Planet Buster
gun, which would if activated destroy
the planet and expunge the fleecy
flier into the depths of space. As
well as having to contend with this
potentially catastrophic outcome the
gamer needed to keep their sheep well
fed in order that it did not explode
due to hunger. The game mechanics and
control system of Sheep in Space were
beautifully contrived, with excellent
gravitational and inertial effects as
the player raced frantically against
the clock and their own hunger to
destroy enemy 'charge-carriers' aiming
to prime the planet for destruction.

Minter's next game, Ancipital (known
to fans as simply Cippy - a character
first appearing in Sheep in Space) was
yet another highly ambitious and
original design. Similar in concept to
Ultimate's Attic Attac the player
battled through a grid of one hundred
levels (or rooms) in order to reach
the final chamber. Cippy retained its
predecessor's gravitational anomalies
with players only being able to walk
on floors, ceilings and walls through
use of a totally unprecedented control
system, and once mastered was a
wonderfully surreal and enjoyable
gaming experience. Ancipital
deservedly earned Llamasoft their
second and final PCG Game of the Month
Award and is seen by many as a
spiritual 8-bit predecessor to the
classic Llamatron. Unfortunately sales
figures for the game were not as good
as expected due to distribution issues
which meant the game was far harder to
find in high-street stores than RMC
had been.

Llamasoft's final four C64 releases
mark a period of wild experimentation
as Minter pursued increasingly offbeat
design directions, a move that was to
baffle certain members of the gaming
community who had begun having
difficulty grasping the sometimes
over-ambitious concepts in his games.
Infamously, one of the most well
documented cases of a Llamasoft game
causing such all-round bewilderment
was with the release of Mama Llama. A
sort of semi-sequel to Revenge, this
game had an unusual control mode where
the player did not actually control
the onscreen Llama character and her
family, merely attempting to defend
them by shooting enemies with an
on-screen floating drone. It
introduced a non-sequential level
structure where players could choose
their own path through the game. A
difficult game to master, it's low
level of immediate playability
compared to other Llamasoft titles and
it's subsequent poor review score
(59%) in the debut issue of Zzap! 64
led to a very public and long-running
stand-off between the famous C64
magazine and Minter himself, during
which he allegedly visited the offices
and ceremoniously burnt a copy of the
Zzap! review with staff writer Gary
Penn's own cigarette lighter.

Batalyx, a strange but enjoyable
collection of mini-games, and Iridis
Alpha, an odd and extremely
experimental scrolling shooter played
across two screens simultaneously
scrolling in opposite directions,
restored the rift somewhat, receiving
'Sizzler' awards in subsequent issues
of ZZap! 64, but the games market and
public tastes were changing, and for
the remainder of the 8-bit era
Llamasoft never really recaptured the
popularity that they had around the
release of Revenge of the Mutant
Camels.

'The videogame business was changing
around this time away from something I
could actively participate in' says
Minter regretfully. Although
continuing to experiment with projects
such as the 'Lightsynth' Psychedelia,
and releasing the compilation Yak's
Progress, featuring the best of his
more popular Commodore 64 work,
Llamasoft was finding it increasingly
hard to find distributors and by the
time Ariolasoft, who had marketed
Iridis and Batalyx but had received
limited financial success with them
pulled the plug on releasing Revenge
of the Mutant Camels 2, Minter made
the decision to give the title away
free on a Zzap! cover tape such was
his desire that fans might get
actually get to play it.

Minter would dabble with the 16 bit
Amiga and Atari ST over the next few
years but, unable to find a publisher
for any new titles, was forced to look
for employment elsewhere. This would
include a seven month stint at Konix
developing Attack of the Mutant Camels
'89 for the company's later
discontinued console, and a two month
game design role for Atari for another
console which failed to get off the
ground, the Atari Panther.
Disillusioned, Minter returned to what
he did best, namely making games he
wanted to play himself. The resulting
ST title, Llamatron, a brilliant
Robotron clone, was released as
shareware, an at the time untested
method of sale for Llamasoft. Unsure
what to expect, Minter was extremely
touched to find himself inundated with
payments from loyal games fans who
enjoyed the game and wanted to pay him
for it. Encouraged by this response
Minter continued releasing shareware
titles on the Llamasoft label while
producing what is his post 8-bit
master-work, Tempest 2000 for Atari's
Jaguar console. In following Tempest
with Defender 2000, again for Atari,
it had all come full circle for the
hairy one after writing the Vic20
program that would become Andes
Attack, and which had led to
Llamasoft's first, albeit small
success back in 1982.

Jeff Minter has recently completed
work on the phenomenal Space Giraffe
for the XBox 360's Arcade Live which
he has released like all his titles
since Llamatron, on the Llamasoft
label for a small 'shareware' style
fee. I wish him the very best of luck.

Sources: 'The History of LLamasoft'
(www.llamasoft.co.uk), Google Tech
Talk - 19.03.07

COMMODORE FREE
thanks to Michael Bevan and RGCD for
permitting the reprint of this article
http://rgcd.co.uk/