Jeff Minter is an English video game designer and programmer who often goes by the name Yak. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and has created dozens of games during his career, which began in 1981 with games for the ZX80. Minter's games are shoot 'em ups which contain titular or in-game references demonstrating his fondness of ruminants. Many of his programs also feature something of a psychedelic element, as in some of the earliest "light synthesizer" programs including Trip-a-Tron.
A music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs. Music video games may take a variety of forms and are often grouped with puzzle games due to their common use of "rhythmically generated puzzles".
Polybius is a fictitious 1981 arcade game that features in an urban legend. The legend describes the game as part of a government-run crowdsourced psychology experiment based in Portland, Oregon. Gameplay supposedly produced intense psychoactive and addictive effects in the player. These few publicly staged arcade machines were said to have been visited periodically by men in black for the purpose of data-mining the machines and analyzing these effects. Supposedly, all of these Polybius arcade machines then disappeared from the arcade market.
Tempest 2000 is a 1994 tube shooter video game originally developed by Llamasoft and published by Atari Corporation for the Atari Jaguar. Part of Atari Corp.'s 2000 series, it is a remake of the 1981 arcade game Tempest.
Punch-Out!! is a series of boxing video games created by Genyo Takeda and Makoto Wada, and published by Nintendo. The main protagonist and player character of the series is Little Mac, a short boxer from the Bronx who climbs the ranks of the fictional World Video Boxing Association (WVBA) by challenging various opponents. These opponents come from different countries and feature various ethnic stereotypes associated with their place of origin.
Star Wars Battlefront is an action shooter video game developed by DICE, with additional work from Criterion Games, and published by Electronic Arts in November 2015. The game, based on the Star Wars film franchise, is the third major release in the Star Wars: Battlefront sub-series, but is considered a reboot to the previous games, instead of a sequel, to reflect the new Star Wars canon that Lucasfilm established after being acquired by The Walt Disney Company.
Yars' Revenge is a 1982 video game designed by Howard Scott Warshaw for the Atari Video Computer System. The game involves a fly-like humanoid alien race known as Yars attacking their arch-rivals the Qotile who have destroyed their habitable planets in their solar system. The players control a Yar and fire or devour an energy shield protecting the Qotile to finish off the enemy with their Zorlon cannon.
Volume is a stealth and indie game by Mike Bithell Games. It was released for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and PlayStation 4 in August 2015, and the PlayStation Vita in January 2016. The game uses stealth mechanics inspired by Metal Gear Solid series, allowing the player to plan courses of action to work through levels without being detected by guards, dogs, and automated security turrets to reach specific objectives. In addition to the game's levels, Volume supports user-made levels that can be shared with others. The game presents a modern take on the Robin Hood legend, where a young thief discovers a plot for a military coup involving various heists, and uses a device called "Volume", with the assistance of its artificial intelligence to perform these heists in a virtual manner and broadcasting them to the world at large to make the coup known. The story is presented with the help of voice actors Charlie McDonnell, Danny Wallace, Dan Bull, James Stephanie Sterling, and Andy Serkis.
Superhot is an independent first-person shooter (FPS) video game developed and published by Superhot Team. Though the game follows traditional first-person shooter gameplay mechanics, with the player attempting to take out enemy targets using guns and other weapons, time within the game progresses at normal speed only when the player moves; this creates the opportunity for the player to assess their situation in slow motion and respond appropriately, making the gameplay similar to strategy video games. The game is presented in a minimalist art style, with enemies in red and weapons in black, in contrast to the otherwise white and grey environment.
No Man's Sky is an action-adventure survival game developed and published by Hello Games. It was released worldwide for the PlayStation 4 and Windows in August 2016, for Xbox One in July 2018, for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S consoles in November 2020, for Nintendo Switch in October 2022, and for macOS in June 2023. The game is built around four pillars: exploration, survival, combat, and trading. Players can engage with the entirety of a procedurally generated deterministic open world universe, which includes over 18 quintillion planets. Through the game's procedural generation system, planets have their own ecosystems with unique forms of flora and fauna, and various alien species may engage the player in combat or trade within planetary systems. Players advance in the game by mining for resources to power and improve their equipment, buying and selling resources using credits earned by documenting flora and fauna or trading with the aforementioned lifeforms, building planetary bases and expanding space fleets, or otherwise following the game's overarching plot by seeking out the mystery around the entity known as The Atlas.
TxK is an action video game developed by Llamasoft and designed by Jeff Minter. The game was released on the PlayStation Vita on February 11, 2014. The game was planned for release on PC, PlayStation 4, and Android platforms until Atari made legal threats against Llamasoft, citing similarities between TxK and Tempest 2000.
Rare Replay is a 2015 compilation of 30 video games from the 30-year history of developers Rare and its predecessor, Ultimate Play the Game. The emulated games span multiple genres and consoles—from the ZX Spectrum to the Xbox 360—and retain the features and errors of their original releases with minimal edits. The compilation adds cheats to make the older games easier and a Snapshots mode of specific challenges culled from parts of the games. Player progress is rewarded with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews about Rare's major and unreleased games.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016 was the 22nd E3, during which several hardware manufacturers and software developers and publishers from the video game industry presented new and upcoming products to the attendees, primarily retailers and members of the video game press. The event, organized by the Entertainment Software Association, took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center from June 14–16, 2016. Approximately 50,300 people attended the event, slightly down from the previous year's. With video game consoles currently a couple years into their 8th generation, the focus of E3 2016 was primarily on new software titles, with new hardware revisions and auxiliary equipment to support the growing market sectors of 4K resolution displays and virtual reality headsets.
Pyre is an action role-playing video game developed and published by Supergiant Games. It was released in July 2017 for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and PlayStation 4, and in August 2017 for macOS. Elements from sports games were incorporated into the title's gameplay. It was the third game developed by Supergiant following Transistor (2014) and it received generally positive reviews upon release.
Feist is an action video game for PlayStation 4, Linux, OS X, Windows, and Xbox One. It launched on PC in July 2015. On December 13, 2016 it was released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
"Less Than" is a song by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails from their EP Add Violence (2017). It was released on July 13, 2017, becoming the band's first single since "Everything" in August 2013. The song's music video alludes to the video game Polybius, an urban legend about a video game used to mine information from people for the government. It peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard US Mainstream Rock Songs chart.
Tempest 4000 is a shoot 'em up video game developed by Llamasoft and published by Atari, Inc. It is a modern reimagining of the classic arcade game Tempest, which was released in 1981. In Tempest 4000, players control a spaceship and navigate through a series of increasingly challenging levels while fighting off waves of enemies. Tempest 4000 was released for Atari VCS, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch.
Lethal VR is a virtual reality shooting gallery video game developed by Three Fields Entertainment and published by Team17.
The Intellivision Amico is a planned home video game console being developed and marketed by Intellivision Entertainment prior to the acquisition by Atari SA of the Intellivision brand in May 2024. It was originally slated to be released in October 2020, but repeated delays followed, leaving the console without a release date.
Moose Life is a forward-scrolling shoot 'em up game for Microsoft Windows developed by Llamasoft. Similar to past Llamasoft titles like Tempest 2000 and Polybius, the title incorporates influences from classic arcade games of the early 1980s, along with psychedelic visuals and electronic music to create a trance-like effect. It supports virtual reality using Steam VR and PSVR.
