Jeff Minter is also the
kiss of death for emerging consoles, having provided launch titles for no less than
three failures - an updated version of
Defender for the
Konix Multisystem, '
Tempest 2000' for the
Atari Jaguar, and most recently '
Tempest 3000' for the
Nuon. Not to mention his work for the
Atari Falcon, and the fact that he was an avid proponent of the
Atari ST (for which '
Llamatron' and his interesting video light synthesiser '
Trip-a-Tron' were originally written).
'Llamatron' was an interesting experiment in the then-novel field of shareware (at least in the UK, especially for a commercial-quality game); after aquiring it from a PD library, you were supposed to send £5 to Jeff Minter in exchange for a poster and kudos. Unlike the majority of subsequent shareware titles, it was not crippled in any way. I played it endlessly and, er, didn't pay.
Jeff Minter himself is the archetypal hippie programmer, a rare breed in the UK. He was born in 1962 and likes Hawkwind, The Ozric Tentacles, llamas, sheep, goats and chicken vindaloo. He currently lives in Wales. He was very briefly a member of Everything2 - as The Yak, he posted a few times in November 2000 - but it would appear he is now long-gone.