JEFF MINTER IS ONE OF GAMING’S TRUE ORIGINALS, A PROLIFIC CREATOR WITH A UNIQUE APPROACH TO GAME DEVELOPMENT – AND NOW HE’S THE SUBJECT OF AN INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY. WE SPEAK TO DIGITAL ECLIPSE’S CHRIS KOHLER TO LEARN HOW IT ALL CAME TOGETHER
Every creator’s story is different, but Jeff Minter is a singular figure in the world of gaming. He’s a legend to those in the know, the kind of people that read Retro Gamer – a developer whose work you can identify at a quick glance, thanks to his fondness for psychedelia and furry creatures. At the same time, much of his career was spent making games for platforms that were primarily popular in Europe, or simply not popular at all in the case of the Jaguar and the Nuon, ensuring that he’s always had a cult audience over his 40 years in game development. Jeff’s story is undoubtedly worth telling, but the idea of it being told by an American developer is perhaps surprising.
So why has Digital Eclipse chosen to take on this project? In part, it’s a long-held desire to collaborate. “When [Digital Eclipse studio head] Mike [Mika] was a young guy who wasn’t in the videogame industry, Jeff was very nice, extended a helping hand to him and kind of got him started on the way,” says Chris Kohler, editorial director at the retro-focussed developer. But more than that, it’s simply the combination of a unique individual and great games. “We kind of call him ‘the last indie developer’ in the documentary. That generation of bedroom coders that really founded the British computer games industry, a lot of them either became the CEO of a big company or they fell out of games. But Jeff, he just wanted to keep going and going, and doing his games his way,” he explains. “It’s a fascinating story for us to tell on the documentary. The games are absolutely solid, and we really want to reintroduce people to Jeff Minter.”
Another reason that the team has been passionate about this particular collection is because the formats covered are so unusual. “We feel like vintage computing platforms are a rich vein of really interesting content that does not get released as much, especially not on consoles,” says Chris. “Even if you wanted to play some of these games there’s so much friction – if you decide, ‘Jeff Minter made a version of Centipede for the ZX81, I’d like to try that,’ you’ve got to go find a ZX81 emulator, you’ve got to find the image of Centipede somewhere. Then you’re kind of stuck with this emulator, and it’s like, ‘What are the settings, how am I going to actually get this thing to run?’
