In a blog post published earlier today (and later copied to Pastebin), British game developer and Llamasoft, Inc. founder Jeff Minter lashed out against Atari, Inc., accusing the veteran game company of bullying him into shutting down any plans for ports or further development on his TxK game franchise based on similarities to Tempest 2000.

Atari released the original Tempest in 1981 as an arcade game, and it was later remade by Minter in 1994 as Tempest 2000 for the Atari Jaguar. The games are considered part of the obscure “tube shooter” genre, which involves ships flying through abstract tubes as they shoot objects and enemies.

Last year, Minter’s studio Llamasoft released the Tempest-like game TxK for the PlayStation Vita handheld system. The game received positive reviews and Gaming Nexus called it “essential to every PS Vita library.” After the game’s modest success, Minter considered porting it to other systems, but that is where Atari’s lawyers come in.

“All abject bollocks”

Minter sums up Atari’s argument as saying the game “looks like Tempest 2000,” which Minter had created for Atari 10 years prior. Atari allegedly accused Minter of stealing source code from Tempest 2000, using the same music and attempting to “cash in” on the Tempest and Atari name.

Minter refutes all of these claims, calling them “all abject bollocks,” explaining that he wrote the Tempest 2000 source code in the first place and the music was an entirely new soundtrack.

He also denied the accusation of cashing in on the name of Atari, saying, “I never mentioned Atari at all, as the last thing I really wanted was for Llamasoft to be associated with the undead Atari responsible for turning Star Raiders into a f–ing slot machine.”

Even worse, Minter accuses Atari of having cheated him out of royalties for his work on Tempest 2000 by very slightly changing the game and porting it to other systems as Tempest X, which he says did use the same source code, music and name as the original games. Minter wrote, “Yet now ‘Atari’ claim that TxK is in fact closer legally to Tempest 2000 than Tempest X was.”

While he says Atari’s claims are all false, Minter says that he cannot afford the legal battle involved with fighting the company and has been forced to relent to its demands.

Atari later issued a statement to Gamasutra, saying that it “has been in continuous contact” with Llamasoft.

Minter angrily denied this claim on Twitter, saying, “Atari have had NO contact with Llamasoft. Their only contact has been threatening letters from lawyers. This is not a dialogue.”

Image credit: Atari (c)