Jeff Minter - What a guy!! This is the best arcade game ever! Back in the day I was so determined to beat the Osric Tentacle I wore a hole in the palm of my right hand with the joystick. And it was worth it. I only ever got there about twice; it’s on the 100th level, and by that point the whole thing is getting a bit manic.
Basically, this game consists of 100 levels of increasingly bizarre, and increasingly speedy baddies who chase you around the screen trying to obliterate your adorable laser-spitting llama.
Jeff Minter - What a guy!! This is the best arcade game ever! Back in the day I was so determined to beat the Osric Tentacle I wore a hole in the palm of my right hand with the joystick. And it was worth it. I only ever got there about twice; it’s on the 100th level, and by that point the whole thing is getting a bit manic.
Basically, this game consists of 100 levels of increasingly bizarre, and increasingly speedy baddies who chase you around the screen trying to obliterate your adorable laser-spitting llama. If you don’t feel that your llama is up to the task of destroying this never ending stream of evil coke cans, rizla packets, doobies, zombie brains and exploding
pot plants etc., then you can always enlist the help of the ever faithful droid to help you blast them out of existence.
There are also loads of power-ups and bonuses you can collect along the way. My particular favourite is the ability to make beasties love you. One of the ways to get extra points is to collect sheep and goats which are wandering about into a sort of sheepish conga line. This power-up causes all the beasties to be so enamoured of you that they all rush towards you with little hearts over their heads, which saves you the bother of collecting them.
The graphics are hilarious, the sound samples even better. If you read the credits, where Minter lists his inspirations, you may even be able to work out where some of them came from.
I used to play Jeff Minter’s games on my Atari ST. (What do I mean, used to? I’ve still got the ST, and I still play it occasionally). Every time we sent him some money for one game, he would send us another game, and we even received, for some time, newsletters, written by his Mum, telling us how the llamas were doing. Yes, he lived on a real llama farm, with his mum, in Wales. It was not just gaming, it was like belonging to some sort of very cosy llama club.
Try Llamatron!! If you like it, you will probably also like Attack of the Mutant Camels and the totally wonderful late night light show that is Tripatron. That works particularly well with the Cocteau Twins, or if you want to update the experience slightly, Lamb or Faithless.
