Jeff Minter (born 22 April 1962) is an English video game designer and programmer who often goes by the name Yak. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and has created dozens of games during his career, which began in 1981 with games for the ZX80. Minter's games are shoot 'em ups which contain titular or in-game references demonstrating his fondness of ruminants (llamas, sheep, camels, etc.). Many of his programs also feature something of a psychedelic element, as in some of the earliest "light synthesizer" programs including Trip-a-Tron. Minter's works include the music visualisation program Neon (2004) which is built into the Xbox 360 console, and the video games Gridrunner, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Tempest 2000, and Polybius. Game development career Pre-commercial career (early years) Minter had expressed an interest in programming computers from a young age. He wrote the game Deflex for the Commodore PET in 1979. However it would not be until a long illness during a university year that Minter's talents would develop in any meaningful way. Following a three-month stint due to a sudden eruption of pericarditis, in which Minter was restricted to lying on his back and was confined to his bed between November 1981 and January 1982, boredom led him to take up computer programming in earnest to pass the time. Upon recovery, Minter teamed up with Richard Jones, a fellow pupil, and together they started writing their own games on their school's Commodore PET. They soon parted ways. Jones went on to commercial projects, some of them in the software market (e.g., Interceptor Micros). Commercial 8-bit games In 1981 Minter started independently writing and selling video games for the ZX80, the first machine he owned. Some were made for software company dk'tronics. These titles were sold as a package but this was not available for very long, as Minter left the company following a royalties dispute. He formed a partnership with his mother, Hazel Minter. Together they developed and commercially produced 20 games for the ZX81, VIC-20, Atari 8-bit family, ZX Spectrum, and Commodore 64. Having been studying physics at the University of East Anglia, success in the programming industry prompted him to drop his studies and take up video game development full-time. The following year, he founded the software house Llamasoft. His first Llamasoft game was a Defender clone for the VIC-20 called Andes Attack (US version: Aggressor). In