By Todd Russell
Jeff Minter always brings a unique and often bizarre take to whatever game he works on. You can count on sheep somewhere in the game, trippy sensory visuals and often very challenging and deeply thought out level design. Minter cares about making the play experience something different and special — and it shows. This is what makes him a legend in the field of game design. He even has his own collection with retrospective, see: Humpday Wednesday #34 FX Tournament +Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story
The last few years Minter has been working with Atari, laying down modern version of lesser known Atari arcade games. His most recent work is I, Robot (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2932910/I_Robot/) that I played and streamed on the (NO) Blue Monday Show today.
If you haven’t ever seen or played the original I, Robot Atari arcade game from 1984, it’s in their Atari 50th collection (PGM recommended).
The game is sort of a little bit of Q-Bert + Tempest + … some eye enemy staring you down. I don’t really care for the eye stare-down enemy because as you don’t intend to jump, the controls can have you actually jumping sometimes, leading to instant death. The concept is do not jump when the eye is open, and you’ll hear a warning phone-like sound and the eye turns red to show you it’s not a time you can jump.
Every other level you’re treated to a psychedelic shooter that is bonus stage before returning back to the avoid-the-eye challenge. I was able to get to level 7 without using continues on the stream and a little over 800,000 points.
From all the changing and pulsing colors and effects this one gave me a headache after an hour or so of playing. This forced me to back off the game and play something else, but I’ll be back. Is this worth $14.99 full retail price I paid? That’s a no on unless you’re a hardcore Minter games fan like me, but you know it will be on sale either the Summer or Winter 2025 Steam sales, so put on your wishlist and check back when it’s 50-75%+ off. You buy it through Steam and if it’s not your bag in the first couple hours of play, you can get a refund.
I like this one much more than Minter’s last Atari game: Akka Arrh. It’s my understanding he’s working on another Atari game to bring to the modern era. As to what it will be? Don’t know, but it likely will be something more obscure than well known. I’d love to see him do a Tempest: Recharged game, or Tempest 5000, but he could be done with Tempest for awhile, after all he’s done 4 of them (Tempest 2000, 3000 on the Nuon, Tempest 4000 and a Tempest-like game on the PS Vita + he’s also done Space Giraffe which is a weird, wild Tempest clone).
What are your favorite Jeff Minter games? Have you played his I, Robot? Planning to? Let us know in the comments.
UPDATE 4/26/2025 @ 9:30am PST: It’s rare that I return to finished articles like this one that isn’t really news-oriented to provide additional editorial, but I missed something about Jeff Minter’s work that I admire. Something very important that I started out the Humpday Wednesday S2E3 show on Wednesday talking about (see: 104 games of Iron Maiden played in a single play session over 17+ hour Live Stream + Humpday Wednesday S2E3). What is it?
In 40+ years of creating, developing programming and publishing games, he always releases finished games. I mean, at launch, the games are done. Maybe he’s put out some unfinished work in that time, but not to my memory or knowledge, unless it’s been maybe bonus filler content or prototype work where it was never planned to be finished.
Compare that to the current state of modern commercial pinball game releases. Stern releases games at v0.80-v.0.90 or so code. 1.0 code from Stern doesn’t ship these days until 1-1.5+ years after the launch with very few exceptions. Since Venom, there’s only been one game by Stern Pinball that the code has been completed (Metallica: Remastered), and that was a few months after the launch. Currently unfinished as of this writing: Jaws, John Wick, The Uncanny X-Men, Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye and, presumably, King Kong: Myth of Terror Island.