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Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story

Llamasoft The Jeff Minter Story review

System: Switch
Release date: March 13, 2024
Developer: Digital Eclipse
Publisher: Digital Eclipse


There have been some outstanding documentaries about video games released over the past few years, chronicling the development of major games like Psychonauts 2 and The Last of Us at a level of transparency that is quite rare in the secretive modern industry landscape. And while I adore these types of projects, what better way is there to experience a slice of gaming history than by playing through it? Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is the latest attempt at an interactive history lesson from developer Digital Eclipse, and this project focuses on telling the story of the rise of the studio behind classic score-chasers like Gridrunner and Tempest 2000. This package compiles over 40 of Jeff Minter’s programs – not all of them are games, interestingly – alongside a swath of video interviews and documents to pore over. While I didn’t find every piece of the package inherently interesting, overall this a great glimpse into the mind of one of gaming’s earliest avant-garde developers, and there’s plenty of fun to be had along the way.

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story gameplay

Digital Eclipse brought Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story to Switch this week, and we have gameplay. You can get a look at the different included titles, gameography, and more.

Catch up on everything you need to know in the following overview:

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story release date

Digital Eclipse today provided the release date for Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story. On all platforms, including Switch, it will be available on March 13, 2024.

In case you missed our previous coverage, here’s what you can look forward to:

Llamasoft The Jeff Minter Story preview

The historical preservation of video games has increasingly become a widespread concern in recent years, due in no small part to the closure of legacy digital storefronts, the frequent delisting of digital games and server shutdowns galore. But beyond that, there’s a real risk that decades of game history from the 20th century will eventually be lost or widely inaccessible – not every game is going to end up preserved via a retro-focused service like Nintendo Switch Online or Antstream Arcade. But developer Digital Eclipse – now a subsidiary of Atari – is experimenting with preservation in a unique way with its Gold Master Series. These interactive documentaries combine games, video clips, scans of game design documents and more into a package that’s not merely a compilation of old games, but also a historical archive of specific chunks of the industry’s history. Following this year’s The Making of Karateka, the studio’s next title focuses on game developer Jeff Minter and his studio Llamasoft, and it’s poised to be a fascinating memoir of a bygone era of game development.

Llamasoft The Jeff Minter Story game list

Digital Eclipse today revealed Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, and we not only have full details and a trailer, but a full list of games as well. Note that news about launch timing is not yet available.

The Switch release – which is the second entry in the Gold Master Series following The Making of Karateka – is an interactive documentary pays tribute to “one of the weirdest, wildest game developers to ever exist”. It’ll come with a library featuring 42 games from eight platforms including the unreleased Konix Multi-System hardware, four “interactive timelines”, over an hour of all-new video featurettes, the ability to save, load, and rewind gameplay at any point, and more.

Here’s the full Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story game list:


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