Jeff Minter
| Jeff Minter | |
|---|---|
Jeff Minter speaking at the Game Developers Conference in 2007.
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| Born |
22 April 1962 Reading, England |
| Other names | Yak |
| Occupation | programmer, game designer |
| Employer | Llamasoft (founder) |
| Website | www |
Jeff 'Yak' Minter (born in 22 April 1962 in Reading) is an independent English video game designer and programmer. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and has created dozens of games during his career. Minter's games are often arcade style shoot 'em ups. They often contain titular or in-game references demonstrating his fondness of ruminants (llamas, sheep, camels, etc.). Many of his programs also feature something of a psychedelic element, as in some of the earliest "light synthesizer" programs including his Trip-a-Tron.
Minter's works include Neon (2004), a music visualisation program built into the Xbox 360 console, and the video games Gridrunner, Tempest 2000, Space Giraffe (Xbox Live Arcade, 2007 and PC, 2008), and GoatUp (iOS 2011).
Minter had expressed an interest in programming computers from a young age. He wrote the game Deflex for the Commodore PET in 1979. However it would not be until a long illness during secondary school that Minter's talents would develop in any meaningful way. Following a 3-month stint in which Minter was restricted to lying on his back and was confined to his bed between November 1981 and January 1982, boredom led him to take up computer programming in earnest to pass the time.
Upon recovery, Minter teamed up with Richard Jones, a fellow pupil, and together they started writing their own games on their school's Commodore PET. They soon parted ways. Jones went on to commercial projects, some of them in the software market (e.g., Interceptor Micros).
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Wikipedia