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Eugene Jarvis Returns To Arcades With Target Terror
Thanks to 1UP for its story noting that famed arcade game designer Eugene Jarvis has resurfaced with a new company and arcade-only videogame. According to the report: "Raw Thrills is the name of the company, and Target: Terror is its game", and this new title is "...a two-player shooter, set in real-life locations threatened by terrorist attacks. Levels mentioned in the announcement include the Golden Gate bridge, the Los Alamos nuclear research facility in New Mexico, Denver International Airport, and a climactic stage where an airliner threatens to crash into the White House." Jarvis, the creator of creator of Defender, Robotron, and other arcade classics, says he plans to change the depressed arcade market by bucking the trend of "...ultra-low budget dogs, ports of faded consumer titles, or overpriced white elephants that just don't earn." Update: 02/02 21:53 GMT by S : A member of the development team has confirmed the game is "a light-gun shooter".
I worked at Bally/Midway when they closed their coin-op department, and it wasn't Neo-Geo that killed the arcades. What was happening was that graphics alone no longer made people want to play the machines, because, to be honest, there really isn't that much of a difference between 50 million polygons a second compared to 100 million. It doesn't look different enough from the version they can play at home for people to actually spend money on. So the things that were doing well were machines that could offer something you couldn't get at home, primarily things like cockpits/seats, dancing pads, light guns, etc. Unfortunately, these had the side effect of increasing both the footprint of the cabinet as well as the cost. In addition, many of these machines are really only fun when linked between several players, increasing the cost even more. This meant that it no longer became profitable for most of the operators to run/maintain the machines since they could fit less machines in the same amount of floor space, they were more expensive, and had more parts that break/wear out, increasing the operating cost as well as the downtime on the machine. At that point, operators started increasing the cost of the games from 25 cents to 50 cents to 1 or 2 dollars a game, which makes people less likely to play unless the machine is truly spectacular, etc. It is these factors that played the largest role in the decline of the coin-op industry.
On a more positive note, Eugene has been around in video games for more than 20 years now, and has consistently made games that were fun and were at the very least decent earning games for the operators. I can't think of any games he has done that I was disappointed with. If there's anyone who I would pick from the video game industry to make a truly kick-ass machine, it would definitely be Eugene Jarvis.