X-Nico

9 unusual facts about Jeff Minter


Gridrunner++

Gridrunner++ is a shooting game written by Jeff Minter originally for Pocket PC but released commercially for Windows.

Hover Bovver

Hover Bovver is a 1983 game written by Jeff Minter released for the Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit and a Windows version for the PC was released by Idigicon Limited in 2002.

Lionhead Studios

This at a time when the company was in severe financial straits, as they had overrun development on two projects, Black & White 2 and Fable, and also canceled B.C. and a project with Jeff Minter named Unity.

Mutant Storm Reloaded

The game's core is very much that of a classic arcade shooter, although its artistic design, colorful and reminiscent of cel-shading or microscopic medical imaging, has been called "psychedelic" and "an eye-frying Minter-esque slice of psychotropic twitch brilliance" by reviewers.

Space Invaders Extreme

It also uses background visualizers as created by Llamasoft's Jeff Minter.

An HD version of the game has been remastered by Backbone Entertainment for Xbox Live Arcade with new four-player multiplayer modes and visualizer backgrounds by Jeff Minter, it was released on May 6, 2009 as a wrap-up to the 30th anniversary.

Tempest 3000

Tempest 3000 is a remake of the Tempest arcade game and a sequel to Tempest 2000, written by Jeff Minter for Nuon.

Video game clone

Many famous titles by Jeff Minter were clones of arcade games in which graphics were turned from the original robot/spaceship graphics to animal creatures.

VM Labs

Notable embedded features included Jeff Minter's Virtual Light Machine (VLM) for music, real-time zoom, gamma-correction and smooth reverse shuttle.


Atari Jaguar CD

The Jaguar CD unit featured a double speed (2x) drive and built-in VLM (Virtual Light Machine) software written by Jeff Minter.

James Lisney

In the early 1980s he arranged the music for several of Jeff Minter's games for the Commodore 64, including Hover Bovver, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, and Sheep in Space.

Non-game

Among the earliest examples are Jaron Lanier's Alien Garden (Epyx, 1982), I, Robot (Atari 1983), which featured a special "ungame mode" called "Doodle City", and Jeff Minter's Psychedelia (Llamasoft, 1984), which is an interactive light synthesizer.


see also