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TxK review: Tidal Tempest
Indie designer Jeff Minter has lingered on the fringes of the video game industry over the last few decades, producing refined versions of classic arcade games that reflect his quirky, bovine-loving personality. His latest game, TxK for the PlayStation Vita, feels essentially like a remake of Tempest 2000, Minter's groundbreaking arcade update that holds the dubious honor of being among the best games released for the unsuccessful Atari Jaguar console. Compared to Minter's follow-up, Space Giraffe (another Tempest-alike), TxK is a return to basics. Built on Tempest's foundation, TxK scales back Space Giraffe's complexity while incorporating many elements from Tempest 2000 for a refined and enjoyable – if overly familiar – look back at arcade gaming's past.
Tempest 2000 remake TxK blasts its way onto PS Vita today
TxK, Jeff Minter's remake of the Atari Jaguar game Tempest 2000, will be available on PS Vita alongside the PlayStation Store update later today. In TxK, players travel down a corridor while shooting obstacles; special musical bonus stages, which players cannot fail, are scattered throughout TxK. "We've tried to create something that is pure and beautiful in the same way as the old abstract vector-graphics arcade games, but vibrant and modern in aspect and effects as you play," Minter wrote on the PlayStation Blog. "You'll blast your way through 100 levels and 3 different game modes to keep you challenged whether you want a long session or a quick 5 minutes of gaming on the go." Minter's TxK was originally due to launch last year. A lengthy gameplay video of TxK, available here, should give you an idea of what to expect: an explosion of color set to a thumping techno soundtrack. And perhaps a llama or two. [Image: Llamasoft]
TxK, Jeff Minter's remake of Tempest 2000, on PS Vita this year
Earlier this month, Jeff Minter announced he was remaking Tempest 2000, the lauded Atari Jaguar game pictured above, for the PS Vita under the moniker TxK. Today, Minter has revealed TxK will launch this year on PS Vita."The new game – TxK – will draw on the spirit of the classic T2K, extending and enhancing it using the fantastic graphical power of the PS Vita system, resulting in what we hope will be a new modern classic arcade shooter," Minter wrote on the PlayStation Blog. He promises new terrains, bonus rounds, enemies, weapons and a completely redone soundtrack.Tempest 2000 launched in 1994 for the Atari Jaguar, itself a remake of the original arcade classic Tempest. Tempest is a fixed-perspective shooter – a player controls a ship skirting the edge of a geometric tube, shooting enemy ships and other obstructions approaching from the center of the screen.
Minter's 'TxK' is a new spin on Tempest for Vita
Jaguar killer app Tempest 2000 (pictured) is being updated by creator, and flashing-lights-and-colors enthusiast, Jeff Minter for Vita. TxK is a new version of his frequently iterated game, which sees players circling the periphery of a geometric prism, shooting down the sides into the screen."It'll be the pure, straightforward shooter that maybe you hoped for when you first saw Space Giraffe," Minter said on his blog. "We're not going to overload you with ultra psychedelia, but we will make it fluid and colourful and awesome-looking on the Vita's delicious, vibrant OLED screen.Minter was approached by Sony, presumably as part of the company's indie PSN push. He plans to keep a development log for updates on TxK, a game that he already promises is "going to be *awesome*."
Caverns of Minos offers minotaurs, Mothersheep through App Store
Jeff Minter's latest iOS installment doesn't directly involve goats, but it does bring back the illustrious minotaurs and disco-psychedelic flavor of classic Llamasoft style. Caverns of Minos has players grab minotaurs from the depths of vertical caverns to return them to the Mothersheep (yes, it's a giant, floating sheep), all in brilliant neon, old-school graphics. Caverns of Minos is available now in the App Store for $1.99 from Minter's Llamasoft, which self-supposedly offers "the finest minotaur-rescuing games on the entire App Store."
Portabliss: GoatUp (iOS)
Did you know that you can download handheld games now? That's amazingly convenient! The only inconvenient part of it is finding the right games to buy -- and that's where we come in, with our Portabliss column. In each installment, we'll tell you about a downloadable game on the iPhone, iPad, Android device, DSi, 3DS, PSP, etc. Today: GoatUp. So I've been playing this game about a goat and ... why, yes, it is a Jeff Minter game! How did you guess? GoatUp, Minter's first platformer, is the expression of seemingly every Minter trope in one tiny, touch-controlled package. That means it's a score-based game with millions of incredibly random things happening all over the screen, flashing bitmap text everywhere, and items and areas that serve as references I'd surely find nostalgic if I had grown up playing European computer games. It's also the first iPhone platformer I've played in which the tilt controls are actually preferable to touch controls. The platforming is very loose, so that you can run and jump kind of haphazardly and still land on a platform. The default control scheme allows you to run left and right by tilting, and jump by tapping the bottom of the screen, which actually grants you enough precision to play successfully. And by "play successfully" I mean "make a goat climb a tower of grassy platforms, eating grass, picking up hundreds of items and spontaneously generating baby goats, who trail behind you after the fanfare of 'Congoatulations!'" GoatUp is available on iTunes for $1.99 for the iPad and iPhone. We're always looking for new distractions. Want to submit your game for Portabliss consideration? You can reach us at portabliss aat joystiq dawt com.
Daily iPhone App: GoatUp
GoatUp is a surreal game made by Jeff Minter, the game developer behind Xbox Live's Space Giraffe and a number of other colorful (and often abstract) retro games over the years. GoatUp has you, as a goat, jumping up a series of platforms while eating grass and collecting various items. The gameplay is often wild, as the series of worlds you go through features homages to the various ages of platforming games. It's always crisp and interesting, with excellent retro graphics, finely tuned controls, and a fun set of mechanics. Everything is backed up by a plethora of gaming references, from the silly to the extremely subtle. GoatUp is a simple title, but it's a lot of fun, and it shows just how much joy the iOS platform seems to inspire in a very experienced developer like Minter. The game features both OpenFeint and Game Center integration, and it's available from the App Store as a universal app right now for US$1.99.
Jeff Minter's first platformer 'GoatUp' hits iOS
Jeff Minter has been surprisingly prolific on iOS, releasing his fourth Llamasoft game on the platform. GoatUp is, like most Minter games, both arcade-style and ungulate-themed -- however, as a platformer, it's actually a first for Llamasoft. It's a vertical jumping game in which you lead goats up a series of platforms, eating grass and kissing other goats to increase the size of your herd. It's not a strict technical platformer, as Minter explained on his blog. "I hate pixel perfect precision and that sphincter-tightening anxiety that goes with every move in such games," he said. "I wanted to be able to bounce around on my platforms like a tiny caprine nutter, not worrying that I might die if I fell more than two inches onto a lower platform or if my hoof hadn't been *right* at the very edge of the platform I just jumped off." Should you find yourself in the mood to bounce like a caprine nutter, the game is available for $1.99 as a universal app.
Jeff Minter bounces 'Deflex' to iOS
Psychedelic shooter designer Jeff Minter has followed Minotaur Rescue and Minitron 2112 with a third iOS game, with no minotaurs in sight. Deflex is a puzzle game in which players set down "bats," left- and right-slanted lines, off of which a ball bounces into on-screen items. Each time the ball connects, the bat changes direction, leading to a complicated strategy for success -- or, if you're like us, a lot of random placement and hoping. It's adapted from a 1982 Llamasoft game called Superdeflex. According to Touch Arcade's preview, the items and characters you seek out all have their own behaviors. "Many just sit there. Some move towards you. Some (like jiggly bananas) dart away from you. It's a bit chaotic. And the elimination of each character triggers the next note in a haunting piano melody." Neither Touch Arcade nor Minter provided a date for Deflex, but it appears to be done, and thus likely headed to the App Store soon. Check out a video after the break, and don't think for a minute that our description has prepared you for the weirdness.
Rescue minotaurs from the sun on iPhone/iPad with Jeff Minter
Jeff Minter has revealed another psychedelic, ungulate-themed shooter, this time for iPhone and iPad -- and it's not the iPhone game Minter showed off last year. Solar Minotaur Rescue Frenzy is an Atari 2600-looking take on Asteroids, in which your swipe-controlled, auto-firing ship must break apart space rocks to find the minotaurs within, and then rescue said minotaurs before they fall into the sun. Allowing too many asteroids to hit the sun turns it into a black hole. One variant removes that sun, while others, called "Tanks!" and "Jets!" provide competitive vehicle combat (like Atari's Combat) with minotaur rescuing elements. Minter hopes to have the game on the App Store in early 2011. If retro-inspired shooting interests you (and it does, since you're now at the end of a post that started with the words "Jeff Minter") check out the video interview between Minter and Retro Gamer's Darran Jones, featuring lots of gameplay footage and minotaurs.
Jeff Minter yaks about iPhone development, shows off shooter
After having a bad go of it on Xbox Live, ever-eccentric indie dev Jeff Minter has moved on to a smaller, greener pasture: the iPhone. Minter has been working on a multi-game engine for the device for some time, and has told Touch Arcade what makes it an appealing platform to him. "I enjoy working on the iPhone because it's capable and interesting and the ergonomics make you rethink things a bit," he remarked, adding that he wants to make "stuff that's playable with the accelerometers and uses touches appropriately but sparingly and in a way that doesn't upset the view too much." To that end, Minter's first, yet-untitled iPhone / iPod touch game is a multi-directional shooter that is played simply by tilting the device. As you can see in the video embedded after the jump, its visual style is a hard break from Minter's usual psychedelia, but we're sure he'll have the game shattering pixels and filling the screen with flying sheep in no time.
Minter's new Gridrunner OK'd by Microsoft, hitting XBLA in April
UK coder Jeff Minter has announced via his LiveJournal that his latest electronic acid trip game has finally gotten the green (and purple, and blue and pink) light for release on Xbox Live this April. As we reported last month, Minter had submitted his latest Gridrunner to Microsoft for approval months ago, but had -- at that point -- heard zilch. Minter casually dropped the news at the end of a post regarding PC Gamer UK's review of Space Giraffe for Windows. So now we know a month, but what about a name? Gridrunner+++ is merely a working title according to Minter, who says that "the final title will likely involve less plusses."
Gridrunner+++ set to release on XBLA in April
According to Videogaming247, Jeff Minter's Gridrunner+++ is set to release on the XBLA at the end of April, after a long wait from the Llamasoft developer. In mid December, Minter unabashedly called Microsoft out, telling Eurogamer that Gridrunner+++ had been submitted "months ago" and Microsoft was simply "sitting on it." For those keeping score at home, Minter previously lamented the slow sales of his original title, Space Giraffe, and was flabbergasted when an XBLA remake of Frogger outsold his first XBLA release by 10 to 1. "OK, we get the message. All you want on that channel is remakes of old, shite arcade games and crap you vaguely remember playing on your Amiga," Minter exclaimed in response to the news of Frogger's success. Thankfully for Minter, Frogger 2 was released months ago and poses no threat to his latest arcade offering. Probably.
Minter: Microsoft 'sitting on' nearly finished Gridrunner for XBLA
Purveyor of video game psychedelia, Jeff Minter, has his follow-up to Space Giraffe – a retooling of Llamasoft classic, Gridrunner++ (shown) – "nearly finished," according to an interview with Eurogamer. The only problem: he hasn't heard from Microsoft for months. "We sent it off to [Microsoft] months ago, but they've just not said anything – we're just waiting for them," Minter said. "Basically I'm going to carry on with the PC version of it if I don't hear from them soon, because they're just sitting on the demo we sent them three or four months ago. We haven't heard a thing." We're eager to give Minter's latest a shot, but Microsoft may not be rushing to make that happen given the sales performance and scattershot review scores of Space Giraffe.
Minter: Microsoft 'sitting on' next Llamasoft title
In an interview with Eurogamer, Llamasoft head and Space Giraffe developer Jeff Minter explained that he is ready to release the next iteration of Gridrunner to the Xbox Live Arcade, but that Microsoft is "sitting on" the game. "We sent it off to [Microsoft] months ago, but they've just not said anything" admitted Minter, adding "they're just sitting on the demo we sent them three or four months ago." And it sounds like Minter's patience is wearing thin, because he also makes it clear that if he doesn't hear from Microsoft soon that he'll just carry on with the PC version of Gridrunner+++. Sounds to us like a bad case of communication and a touch of hesitation to release the title, possibly because of Space Giraffes' less than stellar sales success. Hopefully Minter can get things straightened out and hopefully Gridrunner+++ can end up selling more than Frogger.[Via GamesIndustry.biz]
Space Giraffe on PC next week
Great news, game fans: You'll have yet another chance to ignore Space Giraffe when it arrives on PCs for digital download next week. But get this: When you ignore it this time, you'll be even more justified because it's going to cost $20, according to Giant Bomb. No, really!Admittedly, this will be a remixed version, with some new content and visual tweaks, but yeesh, $20? Just do us a favor, tell Jeff Minter not to come crying to us when 10 times as many people play this.
This Wednesday: Sensible World of Soccer, Tempest come to XBLA
We know what you're thinking: "This isn't news! I've known about the release of Sensible World of Soccer and Tempest on XBLA for weeks!" Well, you're right and you're wrong. As for the well-regarded soccer game Sensible, you hit the nail on the head as we reported last month it would arrive on the 19th for 800 points. So no big surprises there.And as for Tempest, we're pretty sure that you're confusing it with Space Giraffe. Don't feel bad though, it happens to everybody. While "a tarted up, 400-point HD version of Tempest" would be an accurate way to describe both, this one has a way better title.
No more dev blogging for Jeff Minter
Following last week's sour rant about the poor sales of Space Giraffe, and more importantly after the response to said rant, Jeff Minter has announced that he will no longer use his LiveJournal blog to chronicle game development. Minter has a new set of harsh words for those that felt the need to disagree with his rant, while he has words of gratitude for those that encouraged him. He also reassures the masses that he is not giving up game development, and is in fact halfway through his next project. Furthermore, Minter notes that there are "a couple of reasonably quick games" in the works, which he believes is "the way to make it work out" for Llamasoft.So there you have it folks, the world hasn't heard the last of Jeff Minter. Frankly, we're glad to hear it.[Image (minus the caption) via Gamasutra]
Minter's pissed, Frogger outsells Space Giraffe
Jeff Minter, the outspoken, llama loving creator of Space Giraffe is pissed. Not in the European sense either. No, he's angry. Why? Specifically, it's because Space Giraffe was outsold by Frogger ten to one on Xbox Live Arcade in one week. The dejected creator implied on his blog that he was considering abandoning game development all together. Minter had some harsh words against Frogger and the gaming population in general: "OK, we get the message. All you want on that channel is remakes of old, shite arcade games and crap you vaguely remember playing on your Amiga."However, given the XBLA top purchased games, his logic isn't really born out. The XBLA top ten is consistently filled with more original titles than retro titles. Still, we understand Minter's frustration, despite our fond memories of Frogger. While Space Giraffe may have failed to strike a chord on XBLA, hopefully Minter won't give up entirely. We like his style.[Via Joystiq]
Poor sales of Space Giraffe make Jeff Minter sad
Jeff Minter, head of Llamasoft, is apparently a bit upset about the sales of his Xbox Live Arcade title Space Giraffe. Upset enough, in fact, to post a disparaging message to his Livejournal blog, insinuating that he means to stop making games altogether. Prompting this reaction were apparent Live Arcade statistics, revealing that in one week Frogger on XBLA outsold Space Giraffe. Minter is clearly taking the lack of his game's success a bit hard, but we hope that he doesn't let the sheer popularity of retro titles push him away from any future development. Minter's angry ranting was posted at 1:45 am, his time. In the event that he sobers up and removes the post, we've copied his frothy words for your perusal. Check out all the anti-retro spite after the break. [Via CVG]
