Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story | Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox, PC

They have also said they are going to try and release a physical edition at a later point, once they have successfully launched digitally.

Christopher wrote:...Shame they couldn’t get Tempest 3000 on this collection as it’s still stuck on the Nuon. I’m such a Minter fanboy that I bought a Nuon back in 2003 just to play Tempest 3000 (I did get Merlin Racing as a freebie)...

I've never seen the game IRL! It's a shame, but Minter has had rather bad luck on some projects. Konix, Nuon, Jaguar, Unity on GameCube... they just didn't work out.

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:They have also said they are going to try and release a physical edition at a later point, once they have successfully launched digitally.

I'd definitely be interested in a physical edition.

I have a feeling that a small hardcore will love this collection, but it's gonna be pretty niche. TBH I think a lot of the older games will be five-minute plays; happy memories but not something I'd stick with. I'm hoping that Gridrunner, Llamatron and Tempest 2000 are stayers.

It's the old footage and design documentation etc that excites me.

Imagine if they had got a build of Unity and the design docs for that!

Christopher wrote:Imagine if they had got a build of Unity and the design docs for that!

I never realised - or I've forgotten - that there was/is footage of Unity on the GC... IGN have some - albeit low quality - vid and screenshots. It looks very Minter-ish :-).

Time Extension have published a lengthy interview with Digital Eclipse's Chris Kohler about this new collection; it's well worth a read.

Eurogamer liked this collection and have given it a great write-up.

Edit: Nintendo Life, too. I'm pleasantly surprised at the reception :-).

These really were the games I grew up with. I feel it’s my duty to support this one.

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:These really were the games I grew up with. I feel it’s my duty to support this one.

I know what you mean, but I'm too scared of tainting my memories of the games.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Wonder if there's going to be anything on Unity, the "game" he was working on for the GameCube. I remember that getting an Edge front cover before disappearing into the abyss.

Didn’t that evolve into the 360 media player?

Cumberdanes wrote:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Wonder if there's going to be anything on Unity, the "game" he was working on for the GameCube. I remember that getting an Edge front cover before disappearing into the abyss.

Didn’t that evolve into the 360 media player?

I know that the visualizations for the 360 media player were done by Minter, so maybe!

Cumberdanes wrote:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Wonder if there's going to be anything on Unity, the "game" he was working on for the GameCube. I remember that getting an Edge front cover before disappearing into the abyss.

Didn’t that evolve into the 360 media player?

No

Christopher wrote:

Cumberdanes wrote:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Wonder if there's going to be anything on Unity, the "game" he was working on for the GameCube. I remember that getting an Edge front cover before disappearing into the abyss.

Didn’t that evolve into the 360 media player?

No

This is an interesting one and I'm not sure that the answer is "no". Looking at Minter's writing in that link, it doesn't make any mention of Unity... but Wikipedia states:

Three versions of the VLM software were released. VLM-1 is the version installed and developed for the Atari Jaguar CD. Nuon players featured version VLM-2. VLM-3 was to be the basis of the video game Unity, which was in turn upgraded to form the basis of the Neon light synthesizer, utilized in the Xbox 360 and Minter's Space Giraffe.

Source: Wikipedia - Virtual Light Machine

This suggests that there was a link between Unity and Neon... but, hey, Wikipedia isn't always accurate! However, looking further into Neon there is more talk about the link:

(Neon) was based on an enhanced version of the graphics engine originally to be included in Unity, which became an independent project after Unity was cancelled in 2004.

A version of Neon is used as the default visualiser for the Xbox 360...

...The Xbox 360 version, implemented into the media player and activated whenever music is played, is actually the "First Wave" of Neon.

Source: Wikipedia - Neon

It kinda sounds like at least some code/techniques/ideas from Unity were used to help evolve Virtual Light Machine into Neon.

It just shares the same engine, same as Gridrunner Revolution and Space Giraffe.