Sunday 14 October 2007

An exoteric evening with Jeff Minter

Andrea Babich, Jeff Minter,
coloured marking pens, circa 1996

René Guenon wouldn't call Jeff Minter an exoterist. Maybe Crowley would. Still, for me as a young kid, the obscure references he put into his games were a pleasure to decode. Ok, they aren't THAT obscure, since they fall into one of three categories:
a) psychedelic music
b) Atari/Williams games from the 80's
c) drugs.

Still, if Atom Earth Mother is the first CD I bought, it's all Jeff's fault. So,
ten years after the golden age of Jeff 8-bit games, I made this drawing to celebrate the dark side of the Minter. To add some subliminal spice to the coloured marker soup, I used the secret alphabet of Bubble Bobble, still one of the most illuminating examples of "light exoterism" in games. I'm not sure if I used it correctly: at the time, I had to try and remember it by heart. If you want, have fun and decode it, then post the solution to the riddle!
Speaking of Minter, here's my present for you: the Llamatron 2112 game for PC, which you can download by clicking here. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to play it, thanks to modern operating systems which don't support MS-DOS correctly. Talking about exoterism - having a game you can't play is like having a Emerald Tablet you can't decyphre! And I still haven't lost that taste for subliminal messages! Sat Nam.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh man i red about that alphabet so long ago! Link me a guide please.
Oh, and I didn't forget when you told me i was lame 'cause i stopped at level 32 of bubble bobble... i'll have my revenge when it's cold and forgotten.

B. said...

bwhahahah.
Why do I put the links amidst the text, if you don't check them?
Young and impatient you are. Lazy, you are, my young padawan.

Anonymous said...

Damright. But i'm not the first complaining about you links, you should, like, highlight them a bit more. Try underlining, or changing the color.

Fabio Bortolotti said...

I think that Llamatron should work fine with DOSBOX.
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1