Llamatron “read me” file

Nothing valuable to add. Just wanted to tell someone that I grew up not only playing and loving Llamatron, but I lived just 5 miles from Mr Minter, out in the sticks of West Wales. I never met him. Now I too am a software person, championing the idealism of shareware/open source, but nomading on the other side of the world. I like to think it was something in our water.

I remember reading this file back when I got Llamatron on a cover disk in the 90s. Jeff Minter has been a bit of a hero ever since then. Llamatron on the ST was/is remarkable and great fun.

It's strange to see the various turns that the industry took after Shareware. A small number of people did very well out of it; I'm not sure Yak did. But analyses of Shareware vs. Freemium are interesting. For example: http://www.whatgamesare.com/2012/08/freemium-is-not-sharewar...

There is another article [1] that speaks very similarly about how niche unique things become popular and ultimately subverted. It (being [1]) speaks about subcultures being completely dead and I disagree with that. They are just transformed in the wake of the internet and the beginnings of social media. I would even say that due to sites like Reddit and Patreon more subcultures exist and are more diverse than before.

[1] https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

I am guessing, based on the timeline of his ludography on Wikipedia, that the secret project he enthuses about at the end was the Atari Jaguar? By all accounts his Tempest 2000 was one of the best games on the Jaguar; shame the console didn't see more success.

Not sure what he has against the SNES, though.

LLamatron? Well, some of us bought Gridrunner for the Vic-20 when it came out.