Llamasoft/Jeff Minter
For over four decades, this guy's been pumping out games featuring the likes of psychedelic colors and funny animals. And just yesterday as of writing, an interactive documentary-style collection of his earlier work released on PC and consoles.
https://www.gog.com/game/llamasoft_the_ ... nter_story
As such, here's some games from the collection that stick out in my head:
Centipede ZX81 - Apparently he didn't even play Atari's Centipede before working on this conversion for the Sinclair ZX81, which is most impressive. Game's pretty cool too given the hardware, feels very much like a precursor to his own Gridrunner.
Gridrunner/Matrix - Which brings us to Gridrunner and its sequel. Kinda interesting to see the concept of "the grid" being used as a way of bringing an action game genre forward.
Laser Zone - Two different ships, same directional input device. Pretty neat.
Hover Bovver - It's a game about stealing your neighbors' lawnmowers and mowing the lawn without getting caught by them. Need I say more? I chuckle pondering the very concept.
Ancipital - A weird and very "read the manual" experience about a bipedal goat that can shoot bananas on the first screen and other objects on the other screens. Progression is rather strange, having to wait out the appearance of entrances to the next screen, but yeah it's neat.
Psychedelia/Colourspace - It's not even a game, he just wanted to make cool light effects and sell it. Light synths are cool!
Attack of the Mutant Camels '89 - This one's really interesting for being for an unreleased console, the Konix Multisystem. That fact alone really fascinates me.
Llamatron: 2112 - A shareware ST twin-stick shooter with animals and weird enemies. Can't go wrong with it.
Revenge of the Mutant Camels - Another shareware ST game, I think this is one of the better Camels variants, as I find the 8-bit versions to be a bit tricky.
Tempest 2000 - This one also made it into the similarly-styled Atari 50. It's a real fun one, and could be considered its console's one saving grace.