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.
Sonic the Fighters, also known as Sonic Championship on arcade versions outside Japan, is a fighting game developed by Sega AM2. First released in 1996 in arcades on Sega's Model 2 arcade system, Sonic the Fighters pits players in one-on-one battles with a roster of characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog series.
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 from 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 tube shooter video game originally developed by Llamasoft and published by Atari Corporation for the Atari Jaguar in North America on 13 April, 1994. It was released in Europe on 27 June and in Japan on 15 December of the same year, with the Japanese release being published by Mumin Corporation. Part of Atari Corp.'s 2000 series, it is a remake by Jeff Minter of Dave Theurer's 1981 arcade game Tempest, which used Atari's QuadraScan vector color display technology.
Mario Kart Arcade GP is sub-series of arcade games from Nintendo's Mario Kart series developed specifically for arcades in collaboration with Namco. To date, four entries have been released - Mario Kart Arcade GP (2005), Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 (2007), Mario Kart Arcade GP DX (2013), and Mario Kart Arcade GP VR (2017). The first three entries are considered to be relatively rare outside of Japan, with the fourth title not seeing a release outside of Japan at all. The game's have been generally been well-received by critics, who have praised the game's transition of traditional Mario Kart gameplay into an arcade game format, thought to-date, while lamenting that none of the entries have been released outside of the arcade format onto any of Nintendo's home video game consoles.
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.
Survival mode, or horde mode, is a game mode in a video game in which the player must continue playing for as long as possible without dying in an uninterrupted session while the game presents them with increasingly difficult waves of challenges. A variant of the mode requires that the player last for a certain finite amount of time or number of waves, after which victory is achieved and the mode ends. The mode is particularly common among tower defense games, where the player must improve the defenses of a specific location in order to repel enemy forces for as long as possible. Survival mode has been compared to the gameplay of classic arcade games, where players face off against increasingly stronger waves of enemies. This mode was intended to give the game a definite and sometimes sudden ending, so that other players could then play the arcade game as well.
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 five pillars: exploration, survival, combat, trading, and base building. 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.
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.
Survios is an American virtual reality game developer and software publisher based in Los Angeles, California. The company develops virtual reality software and games, including the titles Raw Data and Sprint Vector. Survios was created by graduates from the University of Southern California's Mixed Reality Lab, where they worked together on Project Holodeck. The company has raised over $54 million in venture funding led by Shasta Ventures, Lux Capital and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Three Fields Entertainment Limited is a British video game development studio. It was founded in February 2014 by Alex Ward and Fiona Sperry, who had previously worked at Criterion Games, along with developer Paul Ross who had worked with them under Criterion Games.
"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.
A virtual reality game or VR games is a video game played on virtual reality (VR) hardware. Most VR games are based on player immersion, typically through head-mounted display unit or headset with stereoscopic displays and one or more controllers.
Tempest 4000 is a shoot 'em up video game developed by Llamasoft and published by Atari, SA. 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.
The Intellivision Amico is a home video game console that is being developed and marketed by Intellivision Entertainment. 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.
