A trippy adventure with llamas
Digital Eclipse has quietly honed its craft with these new documentary-style games. Kicking off with their magnum opus, the Atari 50th Anniversary collection, they have continued to take gamers on a journey into the history of various games with extreme success. Their latest takes a look at one of the most interesting game creators ever. Jeff Minter may not be a household name to some, but his work has inspired so much in the world of gaming. I guarantee you have played one of his titles, and most likely had a great time. This latest from Digital Eclipse takes us on a long, and storied career of one of the most eccentric and brilliant minds in gaming.
For those unfamiliar with Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master Series are in for a treat. While there are plenty of games included, it is the format that makes these collections special. Each entry is broken down into a timeline filled with high-resolution scans of business cards, old magazine ads, concept art, and design documents. It is really awesome digging through these to see how some of our favorite games come to life. Sprinkled throughout each timeline are the games themselves that have been designed to support modern controls. The emulation is near perfect, and revisiting them as I learned about their place in history is an amazing touch. I adore this format and hope it never ends.
MSRP: $29.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $29.99
This collection also contains entirely new interviews and documentary footage chronicling Minter’s career with input from several industry veterans as well as Minter himself. Much like their past work, this really gives players insight into the progression of the games themselves. These are always the highlight of these collections for me. Watching a designer discuss their process when creating games, I love is incredibly insightful. I want more of these for so many games and creators.
Of course there is also a massive vault of games. Over 40 are included with titles dating all the way back to the Vic-20 and the Sinclair ZX81, but the game most people probably know is Tempest 2000. The Jaguar version is included here, sadly though the Jaguar version of Defender 2000 is not here due to licensing issues. There are plenty of other games in here, but a few highlights I recommend checking out are Attack of the Mutant Camels, Gridrunner, and Llamatron 2112. There is even a reimagined version of Gridrunner developed by Digital Eclipse which is excellent.
Playing some of the old cassette games can be rough at times, but the developers have done an amazing job of translating these older titles onto a controller. The normal extras are here including button mapping and save states. Digital Eclipse is one of the best in the business when it comes to bringing old games into the modern era. The museum of games is chock full of some of the most eccentric titles I have ever played, and watching the progression of Minter’s work is simply fascinating.
The presentation remains the same from previous Gold Master games, but it works. There is a gamification of working through the entire timeline and hearing that chime when one is completed. The game museum is a little wonkier than this one, but I got used to it. Controlling the games is simple and digging through the entire collection is a breeze. It does suck that the audio is still out of sync on Xbox as game mode will cause that, but it isn’t awful.
The Gold Master Series remains the gold standard for telling these stories. Living in the era when almost any game can be playable on modern consoles is truly great. I always get excited when Digital Eclipse announces a new one of these. I cannot wait to see what they cover next and hopefully this series never ends. Big game publishers would be wise to get in on this trend, no one does it better than Digital Eclipse.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
