
Llamatron “read me” file - danbolt
http://dadgum.com/halcyon/BOOK/MISC/LLAMA.HTM
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tombh
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.

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bencollier49
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...](http://www.whatgamesare.com/2012/08/freemium-is-not-
shareware-20.html)

~~~
failrate
He is still out there plugging away. Looks like updated ports of old games to
the Nintendo Switch.

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JonnyNova
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](https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths)

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PhasmaFelis
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.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
> Not sure what he has against the SNES, though.

I think that was just his way of hinting that his top-secret project wasn't on
SNES, for which the hype machine was in full swing at the time.

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Graham24
LLamatron? Well, some of us bought Gridrunner for the Vic-20 when it came out.

