It got me thinking of Minter-esque games on the Spectrum, that is games that are highly inspired by those early arcade shooters like Centipede, Tempest, Galatians, Space Invaders. Minter did always like making his games more psychedelic, like adding in random Llamas, especially in his later C64 games, but his early games seemed to have less of those traits.
Probably the most Minter inspired game on the Spectrum that comes to mind is Exodus by John F Cain and publishes by Firebird. It’s a cracking little Tempest clone and while it seems very basic by even 1984, it still holds up as a quick arcade shooter that’s worth 15 minutes of your time attempting a new high score. It’s also got a Llama sprite as an enemy, you can’t get more Minter inspired than that!
While not having any psychedelic traits at all, Beamrider by Activision is a great take on the Galaxians or Space Invaders genre. In the early days, Activision were really good at taking arcade games and turning them into their own version, although most of these were only published on the Atari or Commodore 64.
Another game, also published by Firebird, is Crazy Caverns, which isn’t a shooter but is a mix of Pac-Man and Sokoban with enough frantic action and assault on the senses to make you think it could have been Jeff Minter that made it!
What other Minter-esque games on the Spectrum can you think of? What frantic, heavily inspired from an arcade game shooters are there? Or other arcade style games that totally assault your senses to the point it wouldn’t be recommended to take any mind mashing mushrooms while playing?
