Jeff Minter - or Yak as he sometimes likes to call himself - is not someone you can be indifferent about. For ages, he was the programmer of Commodore machines in Britain, but recently he's come under savage attack in certain quarters. Whether you're for him or against him, you can't ignore the fact that he's made an important contribution in developing the art of the computer game.

The modestly titled Yak's Progress is a compilation of Minter's eight most famous games.

They start with Attack Of The Mutant Camels, a scrolling shoot-'em-up which, as Jeff admits in his enjoyable introduction to the compilation, looks pretty rudimentary by today's standards. "I didn't even know where the scroll registers were!" The ideas weren't particularly original either, but the fast and furious zapping attracted considerable enthusiasm at the time.

The same could be said about two grid shoot-'em-ups Matrix and Laser Zone - primitive looking, but fast, demanding, noisy and frenetic. The type of game that shattered parents' illusions about the educational value of the computer they'd purchased.

These illusions were only slightly restored by the release of Hovver Bovver, a game which actually featured music and a real-life scenario. Well, if you can call mowing a lawn with a borrowed mower, while being chased by a neighbour, a gardener and your dog real life.

My own favourite is Revenge Of The Mutant Camels, the game which I would guess sold in the greatest numbers. This caused something of a sensation on its release almost exactly two years ago. Not only was there a superb smooth-scrolling background, an unheard of number of different attack waves (42) and some pretty cool music, this was also the first British game to feature a fast-loader!

The rest of the compilation (which comes on two tapes, two games to a side) gets increasingly animal-dominated. There's Sheep In Space, and Ancipital, the bizarre multi-location game starring a half-man, half-goat.

Compared to today's all-singing, all-dancing, ultra-slick US productions, Minter's games look pretty raw, but this collection at least offers newcomers to the C64 a cheap way of experiencing the work of one of the industry's great personalities.