Jeff Minter throws a wobbly

via Computer and Video Games


Tempest 2000 creator Jeff Minter has gone a bit mental on his blog, after the disappointing sales of Space Giraffe on Xbox Live Arcade.

The psychedelic shooter was released on the service in August, and apparently, much to Mr. Minter's frustration, it's even being outsold by Frogger.

"Not seeing a lot of reason to continue even trying to make games, at this point, when a remake of Frogger, one of the worst games in the history of old arcade games, can outsell Space Giraffe that we put so much love and effort into, by more than ten to one, in one week," writes Minter on his blog.
To be fair though, in Frogger you can work out what's going on fairly quickly and you can't win by taping the 'A' and analogue stick into the down position.

"OK, we get the message. All you want on that channel is remakes of old, shite arcade games and crap you vaguely remember playing on your Amiga. We'll shut up trying to do anything new then. Sorry for even trying", Minter added.

No one can argue that Space Giraffe is creative, sure, but when you go out to deliberately shape an off-the-wall underground shooter and then moan when the mainstream don't pick it up, you're not going to get much sympathy.

I bought Space Giraffe just because a couple of my friends had bought it and I like to compete on high score tables. I have more than given it a fair try, I even got as far as understanding what I was supposed to do and how to get bonus multipliers. However, the game is just not much fun.

I didn't manage to beat one of my friends high scores but then Jeff and co wiped the scoreboard clean and nobody I knew who owned the game could be bothered to set a new high score.

In it's favour, Space Giraffe does have very stylish visuals but they did get in the way of the game play. The graphics were reminiscent of Rez, but maybe a bit over-the-top.

I think Space Giraffe (and Rez) was a bit of mutton dressed as lamb, to use a bovine reference which Jeff M is so keen on.

I don't own Frogger but I expect it is more fun than Space Giraffe.

That word search game is worse than Space Giraffe though, surely.