Have you got any idea about who Jeff Minter is at all?

if you did, then you would not have asked that question. the answer is no, and hang your head in shame

You know, that is a *really* rude answer. I will not hang my head in shame, as I feel that you should be the one to do so, given your rather rude response to a legitimate question.

I hope Jeff Gerstmann plays it.

I am a rude person, do you want me to pretend to be someone I am not?

And Jeff MInter is one of the greates of game design history. He is one of the people who defined what games can be. Anyone with a passing interest in gaming and classical gaming should know about him, same as with (off the top of my head) Shigeru Miyamoto, Roberta Williams, Toru Iwatani, Allan Alcorn, Chris Avellone, David Braben, Yoshitaka Amano, Todd Howard, Julian Gallop, Takashi Tezuka, Ken Levine, Brian Fargo, John Carmack, Yu Suzuki, Sid Meier and many others. It is thanks to people like Jeff Minter and these that we have the games that we play today... including RPG's.

I think you should get this, not for the games, but for the documentary

But I still haven't bought Atari 50, and I think I'd want to get that first.

(Does that collection include any games with mechanics that could be considered RPG-ish, even if they're primitive?)

just look at the screenshots and just google who Jeff Minter is. He did not do RPG's at all. His games are all action, arcade and shooters, ranging from scrolling to single screen games. Starting from the VIC-20, C64 and Spectrum, working with the limitations of those systems and really expanding on what they can do and what good game design is capable of.

He is defined by games like Tempest 2000, Gridrunner, Attack of the mutant camels and Batalyx. What he is most known for is psychedelic, abstract and original game settings and designs, pared with really intense, complex and good action / arcade mechanics.

I feel Jeff Minter is/was a legend back in the day mainly in UK and maybe rest/parts of the Europe. For some reason I am not so surprised Amerikanos don't necessarily recognize him (at least that well), similarly like they may recognize Richard Garriott or Chris Roberts or Hideo Kojima or Roberta Williams. Did Jeff even make games for the popular American systems like TRS-80 or Apple IIc or IBM PCjr or early PC-compatibles? (I guess Commodore 64 was also quite popular in America but to me it always seemed Americans were more Apple IIc and IBM PC people; even Amiga seemed relatively rare in the US).

I recognize his name from my childhood as "didn't he make some sort of quirky and comical mutant llama or camel shooters that were quite popular in Commodore 64 in the 80s?", but frankly even my expertise on him stops there (I never played the said shooters as I never owned either Commodore 64 nor ZX Spectrum). I actually saw his face the first time now when I googled for him.

Either way, an interesting collection which I will definitely get at some point (just to educate myself on what games exactly that bloke did; well Tempest was one of my favorite arcade games, if Jeff is resposible for the Tempest2000 remake of it), and yes I knew the answer to the question whether he ever made RPGs. For all i knew, he was known for simpler action games, he was not Lord British in that regard.

Jeff Minter still is, and he is still making games. Llamasoft is still his compay, producing games. For example, they released the VR game Polybius on Playstation VR and PCVR a couple of years ago. he has made and released games on all generations of gaming machines.

edit - yes, I am a fanboi

Well, pretty much everything in this package is new to me. For the longest time, I only ever associated Jeff with his version(s) of Tempest. Over the years I kept reading and hearing about a good many of his other games, but I've never actually played any of those.

Just went through the entire early years section. Good stuff. Of all the games in that quarter I found 3D3D, Bomber, and ROX III the most interesting/fun. Jeff very accurately described the handling of Defenda/Andes Attack. It's so incredibly easy to get killed in that one. Found it quite amusing that he made his clone of Centipede without ever having played the original.
A Llamasoftie then? ;)

Nah, tons of people with C64s in the US. Jeff Minter was definitely known.

Heard about Llamasoft in the past, especially Tempest 2000, but never played any of those games.

And he did make quite a few DOS ports, such as Llamatron.

I feel like I may be the only person here who's never heard of this guy or any of his games, and I've been playing games since the early 80's. Sounds like a giant pile of shovelware.

Indeed, here is Jeff Gerstmann trying it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kZjX3LkEfE&ab_channel=TheJeffGerstmannShow