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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".
While I have little doubt that, if done well, this new game will succeed, I very much doubt that it will revive or spark a revival of the arcade.
The arcade had two appeals: atmosphere and easy, library-like access to games. The atmosphere hasn't changed, and that's been a big problem. The evolution of games and gaming in general have taken the typical gamer away from the open, cacaphonic and busy, glitzy room and toward tightly-packed rows of computers where more than a handful of friends can play with and against each other in the same virtual world.
PCs and game consoles have made access even easier and more convenient. Now you don't even have to walk across a room to play the next game, because it's only a mouse-click or DVD/CD/Cartridge swap away. And best of all, you can play all of these games sitting down.
PC and console gaming has had the time not only to one-up arcade gaming, but lap it. Configurable controls, co-op modes, engaging stories, saved games, multiplayer against humans rather than bots, multiplayer with more than a handful of friends, etc. All have lured the modern gamer away from the arcade, by and large.
And all of this has been simple progress, an evolution of gaming. In the past, Centipede and Pac Man were kings of the electronic gaming domain. The equipment was too expensive, too large, and too bulky for all but the most wealthy of gamers to have home access. The best business model was to put a bunch of the giants in one room and charge a coin or two per play. That won't work, anymore, and it's not a dearth of quality games which have caused this decline; this new game would work just fine on an xbox or PS2, and that alone should be an indication of why more games like it will not cause gamers to flock to the Electronic Arcades as they once did.
Times have changed, and they will again. The arcades will go the way of the news reel, and nothing can change this. Whether or not it is for the best is a matter of personal opinion.
~UP
Eat the Path.
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.