Written by Jeff Minter at Llamasoft and first published by Ariolasoft in 1985, Batalyx is a compendium of six minigames that can be played in any order. Completing them all must be done within a set time limit in order to beat the game.
Monthly Archives: August 2022
Sheep in Space, Commodore 64
Sheep in Space is a weird horizontal shoot ’em up, written by Jeff Minter and published by Llamasoft in 1984, and featuring a flying sheep who must complete horizontally-scrolling levels by shooting all the available enemies. Sheep in Space has its roots in Defender and Jeff‘s previous game, Ancipital.
Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Commodore 64
Revenge of the Mutant Camels is the 1984 sequel to Attack of the Mutant Camels and this time you play as a camel who must fight his way through 42 different attack waves. You can choose sequential or random attack waves, but the aim is the same: you must survive through all 42 waves to beat the game.
Psychedelia, Commodore 64
Psychedelia, by Jeff Minter of Llamasoft, is not a game but a “light synthesizer” – a program that turns input (either from a person via a joystick or keyboard, or from a sound input) into graphical on-screen patterns. Psychedelia was first released in 1984 and was one of the first “light synthesizers” ever made; certainly ever to be made available commercially; and it was the seed that led to the Winamp visualisation plugin craze of the late 90s/early 2000s, and to the evolution of light synthesizers or “sound-to-light” technology in general.
Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time, ZX Spectrum
Ported by Chris Clark of Salamander Software and first published in 1984, Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time is a straightforward conversion of the VIC-20 original, but with a couple of tweaks here and there.
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Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time, Commodore 64
The 1984 Commodore 64 version of Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time was converted by Aaron Liddiment for Llamasoft and is pretty much the same as the classic VIC-20 original, except with better graphics and arguably better sound.
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Hellgate, Commodore 64
I would say that Hellgate is one of my least favourite Jeff Minter/Llamasoft games. While it is competently-programmed and nicely-presented, Hellgate is also a very difficult game to play effectively as a single-player.
Traxx, ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum version of Jeff Minter‘s Traxx was published through Quicksilva in 1983. It was written by Salamander Software for Llamasoft and, to be honest, it’s not a very good game at all.
Traxx, VIC-20
First released for the VIC-20 in 1983, Traxx is a simple maze game where you have to connect boxes together using red lines. It’s another early Jeff Minter game that is only partially successful.
Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time, VIC-20
The original Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time first came out for the VIC-20 in 1983. The Commodore 64 version was a later port, in 1984.
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The King of Grabs 