Talk:Jeff Minter

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VfD discussion from March 2004[edit]

Vanity page. Even though I edited this page long ago, looking at his body of work, it is not notable and the entry was probably created by Minter himself (written by anon user). If he were notable, it'd be a valid entry. But I can't see that he is or even was. —Frecklefoot 14:59, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)

  • Keep. 10,000 hits as game designer. Niteowlneils 17:09, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Not significant???? Jeff Minter is a god! To think he's insignificant, you'd have to be... ooh, American or something. Search Google.uk for his name, on the other hand... Average Earthman 17:16, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Jeff Minter is a legend. To delete his entry, 75% of the listed game designers (anyone who's not a Sid Meier or a Miyamoto) would have to go as well. Not notable? See Slashdot's articles of today (March 29). Dehumanizer 17:29, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep - the above arguments aside, Exploding sheep links to him. And if that's not justification for inclusion, I don't know what is -- Cyrius | (talk) 17:56, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)
  • Okay, I relent. However, his body of work is rather spurious. Just looking at the entry, I couldn't find one title I could recognize (and I've been a gamer for 26 years). It just looked like vanity to me. I'll remove the VfD message, but I don't agree that he is as notable as his article claims. Most of his titles were knock-offs of popular games and I can't find any that had any significant impact on the industry or game design as a whole. —Frecklefoot 18:55, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)
    • I don't think games designers need to have penetrated the US games market in order to have articles here. Minter is very famous in the UK. Morwen 19:42, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)
      • I don't think locality has anything to do with it. I'm sure Sid Meier is recognized in the UK. Peter Molyneux is well-known here, as well as several UK-based game development companies. Minter just doesn't show up on the radar. —Frecklefoot 21:56, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)
        • Minter's games, except perhaps Tempest 2000 and the upcoming Unity, aren't "mainstream". Most of the world isn't ready for games with llamas, sheep and camels. :) But those who know him, love him and his games. Dehumanizer 22:34, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • Definite keep. Minter is instantly recognizable for anyone who grew up in the UK playing on Vic-20s and C64s. -- DrBob 22:41, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Minter is well-known and loved in the UK for his eccentric and original games. — Gdr 14:53, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. A reasonably important part of the game business in general -- Wirehead 21:53, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Jeff Minter was a highly significant figure in the games industry in the 80's, and well worthy of a wiki writeup. Stormie 05:42, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Minter didn't really play the games industry in the commercial sense that we know now. He always writes games for the fun of it, not for the money. This may have led him to have had less notoriety than most, but he certainly was well known in the 1980's (and even in to the 1990's). Kabads
  • Keep. Your personal unfamiliarity with him is your problem. Jeff Minter pioneered light synthesizers, direct forebearer of all "visualisations" found in every single media player. That seems massively significant, IMHO. Microsoft knew so because they hired Jeff Minter, the pioneer of the whole genre, to create the light synth / visualisation that's hard-wired into the X-box 360 console. When Atari released their 64-bit Jaguar console, they also turned to Minter to supply the obligatory "free game". Also significant is that Minter was among the early shareware pioneers, proving the viability of the concept. In the UK, he was a programming superstar in the '80s and, unlike most of the others, he still produces work and still has a following - significant industry reputation - and still is involved with serious and important projects (Jaguar, Nuon, X-box 360 that we're talking over a decade where the leading big industry names - Atari, Microsoft - all go to Minter first). Sorry, if you don't know Minter or think this pioneering programming superstar - who helped put visualisations into your media player and shareware onto your hard drive - doesn't qualify then you merely reveal your ignorance. He qualifies culturally, influentially and on actual technical innovations and pioneering work, across three decades and still going strong. If Minter doesn't qualify then no-one does. PetrochemicalPete 23:02, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • The article hasn't been up for deletion for two years... JIP | Talk 10:20, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for B3TA interview lk[edit]

A resounding thank you! goes to User:Pritch for contributing the external link to the outright hilarious Minter netmeeting/interview held at the B3TA website! :)))) --Wernher 15:18, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Keep[edit]

Keep: Never heard of him? You will soon. His software is part of Microsofts new Xbox 360 console. The man is a legend.

Erm, look at the date on that VfD discussion. You're a bit late. ;) Sockatume 02:00, 14 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Gosh, I'm still quite shocked about the initiator of the VfD two years ago. The guy has supposedly played digital games for 20++ years, been a worker in the games industry and written a lot of Wikipedia articles about classical computer/video games, and has STILL managed to completely miss Minter's work. Perhaps this indicates that the difference between the European and American gaming cultures in the 1980s was more profound than usually thought. --Viznut 08:54, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I dont think it was. UK games like Elite were well known from at least 1984 for their quality, and Mastertronic games were widely available here for cheap. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.125.110.223 (talk) 19:16, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Jeff Minter games category?[edit]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but would it be appropriate to start a category just for Minter games, seeing as how they're an important aspect of computer games history and all connected by a single unique creative vision? I seem to recall he's released about 30 in total, so there are plenty to be written about. --Thoughtcat 16:30, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good idea. JIP | Talk 09:44, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nuon Work[edit]

Minter's interview in an issue of Edge ages ago (this was long before Unity) stated that he was responsible to some degree for the design of the Nuon hardware itself, and not just Tempest 3000. He talked about how it was an interesting new challenge. Anybody got the issue? No. 95 I think. Sockatume 01:11, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The early years.[edit]

Not sure how to correctly edit this page, so I thought I would just put in the info I have, and let someone else correct the real page.

In Home Computing Weekly Issue 4, March 29-April 4th 1983 on page 11 it has a article on Jeff minter (Who was quite well known by most kids of the 80's who used commodores, or read computer magazines. Even I had heard of him, and I was a Sinclair Guy...)

The article states [start partial quote from article] "Business Born in Bed" Jeff Minter was so bored at being forced by illness to spend three months on his back that he learned programming. Now in partnership with his mother he has 20 games on sale for the ZX81, VIC-20, Atari, Spectrum and Commodore 64. Jeff, 20, was due to return to his physics studies at the University of East Anglia in January. But he will not be going back now. His mother, Hazel, said: "He was on his back from November to January so he decided to learn computing. He already had an interest in it." ... [end partial quote] there is more to the article, but the main point is the above does not agree with the early years section on the wikipedia entry. 86.156.206.197 03:37, 6 September 2007 (UTC) ken[reply]

checkY Done. Thanks for the info. -Thibbs (talk) 19:33, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The dates don't match with the statement that it happened during secondary school, though. The article says he was born in April 1962. Secondary school in the UK runs up to age 16; 18 if the school has a sixth-form. Particularly poor students (which I think we can assume a star computer programmer is not) can repeat a year, meaning the oldest possible secondary student is 19. The lying in bed episode is dated 1981-1982, which means he would have been 20 years old during his last school term. That just can't happen. He may have been enrolled at a college or university, but he wasn't at secondary school when he was bedridden. Andrew Oakley (talk) 15:15, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It looks to me like he was enrolled at U of East Anglia, but I don't have a copy of the source on hand. Anyway I've just removed the word "secondary" for now. -Thibbs (talk) 19:01, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Dates[edit]

I notice a new brace of dates have been added to the article, or more accurately a number of dates that had previously been listed have been changed. I do not doubt that these new dates are more accurate, however would it be possible to leave some reference citations for the newly added dates? Cheers, -Thibbs (talk) 17:37, 30 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if this counts as original research, but I got all dates from the games themselves or an accompanying readme. For instance, the PC version of Revenge of the Mutant Camels includes a readme with the history of the series, which was very useful because the C64 version of the game does not include a date with its on-screen copyright symbol. For firmware-based VLM, I used the release date of the console as it appears in their Wiki elsewhere on this site. For platform information I used available downloads on the Llamasoft website and/or the aforementioned readme files. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do citations or know when they are appropriate for things like copyright dates which appear directly within the item in question. I'd be grateful to hear your thoughts on the matter. I don't mean to step on any toes, but when I saw so many obvious and easily refuted errors, I had to take action. Xot (talk) 00:28, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No problem. I don't feel as though my toes have been stepped on. I'm no expert on the material, I actually just showed up a few weeks ago to put the article in some sort of shape as it was looking pretty bad at the time. The best way to cite readmes, as far as I know is with Template:Cite video game. Good luck, and thanks for the contributions so far. -Thibbs (talk) 00:52, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some dates look wrong: it says he developed software on the school computer after his recovery in 1982. But at that stage he would be 19 or 20. Even if he retook the upper 6th form year to spend the maximum one year extra in 6th form, he should have left school in the summer of 1981 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tonecontrol (talk • contribs) 21:48, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See discussion above. -Thibbs (talk) 19:01, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ruminants[edit]

Llamas and camels are camelids, not ruminants. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.140.133.56 (talk) 18:11, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

False. That's like saying lions and tigers are carnivores, not predators. -Thibbs (talk) 19:59, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

gridrunner published by Quicksilva?[edit]

Obviously if jeff says otherwise, but I don't recall Quicksilva ever having published gridrunner, albeit they were famous for lots of other stuff. I belive gridrunner was origonally published by another company that ripped him off, he then relaeased gridrunner under the llamsoft label, followed be several other games which did include andes attack.

his first venture was building an extended (hardware) rom set for the vic 20 which may have been published by arctic software or possibly vulcan electronics. 86.6.186.152 (talk) 09:08, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

New sources[edit]

I am no longer watching this page—ping if you'd like a response czar 22:35, 25 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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Time to split Llamasoft and Jeff Minter?[edit]

For at least the last ten years Llamasoft titles have been co-written with Ivan/Giles. Would it make sense to have two pages now, one covering Llamasoft that covers the titles etc and a second, probably shorter one covering Jeff? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.183.231.197 (talk) 09:40, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Grouping games by generation is meaningless if you don't know what those generations mean.[edit]

Please consider removing the grouping of games by 'generation'. I have only a vague idea what the generations are. I assume this comes from console/video game land (American) however all of Jeffs early games ran on home computers so this grouping is going to be meaningless to most who played those games.

As evidence of how 'generation' is not useful/relevant, not one of the the Commodore 64, Vic-20, Atari 8 bit and ZX Spectrum wikipedia articles mention belonging to a any 'generation'. It is simply not a grouping that was ever commonly used for those machines.

A much more useful and informative grouping would simply be by 8bit, 16bit, 32bit.

Update: I found the wikipedia article on 'video game generations' that seems to roughly match the generations used here. However, again, that article does not mention ANY of the home computers Jeff wrote games for (C64, Spectrum etc).

If the 'generation' refers to something completely different to 'computer hardware released around a particular time period' then this absolutely needs to be linked and/or added to this article to make that meaning clear. 180.150.38.43 (talk) 09:05, 25 April 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.150.38.43 (talk) 08:51, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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