Jarvis On Robotron, Defender, Acolytes

Koworld writes "The videogaming webzine, Way of the Rodent, has a new interview with videogame legend Eugene Jarvis, whose forthcoming arcade comeback was recently covered on Slashdot Games. He talks at length about his gaming philosophy, arguing: 'All the best videogames are about survival - it's our strongest instinct, stronger than food, sex, lust for money... You have to create a survival story - to tap into the raw energy and adrenaline and get people naturally excited. Sounds obvious, but that's why you need a LOT of very nasty bad guys trying to kill you.' The site also features other Eugene Jarvis articles, including an in-depth tribute to Jarvis by cult programmer Jeff Minter, and Stuart Campbell discussing Cruis'n USA's impact."

Comments

Ultimate Survival Games

[lake2112]

1. Missle Command (we need a new one) 2. Super Maris Bros (I get chased by big turtles, and my princess girlfriend gets kidnapped by a dragon every once in awhile) 3. Pac-Man, the race for survival ... I can only survive by collecting dots, and have four silly named ghosts trying to kill me.

I was really excited by Jarvis's new game

[oskillator]

... until I found out that it was yet another light-gun game. A new game from Eugene Jarvis! Legendary genius, creator of Robotron 2084 and Defender! Innovation time, right? Whoops, no. Yet another addition to the baker's gross of rail shooters that have been released in the past few years.

I can see where they're coming from. It's more financially sound to make something that's been shown to work, especially in an industry that's hemorrhaging money as badly as arcades are. But man, how boring!

Re:I was really excited by Jarvis's new game

[Radius9]

I wouldn't write it off yet. Eugene Jarvis has the a unique skill for making games fun. I've worked with him, and no one can explain his ability to make games fun, but he can do it. Cruisin' USA went on to be one of the highest selling arcade games of all time, but following your philosophy, its really "just another arcade racer". I'm confident in Jarvis' ability to make the game fun, even if it is "just another light gun game".

Defender.

[ArmorFiend]

Defender

This is my nomination for the best video game title of all time. Eugene knows how name his games, too.

Re:Anti-rpg?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gran Turismo is great. F-Zero is great too. For that matter, so is Mario Kart. I agree that there is plenty of room for each of these types of games.

But I also think there's a niche to be filled by arcade-style racers that take place in realistic settings. The Cruis'n games were fun, as were plenty of other games that fit this genre, like Pole Position, Outrun, and Daytona. Granted, they don't all follow the same kind of satisfyingly simple physics models that Jarvis describes, but they all exemplify non-realistic racing games that seem plausibly real and are extremely fun.

My Dinner With Eugene

[TheDude2084]

Eugene, if you read this - I've lost your email address over the years and several moves, and if you are interested in getting in touch, I would love it if you dropped me a line at dudeATcircularreasoningDOTcom

It is so cool to finally see a Jarvis story on Slashdot. Eugene Jarvis is arguably the greatest video game designer of all time, and he's also a really cool guy. I've met him on a couple of occasions - it all started when I was doing my CS undergrad degree. We had to do a cheezy html assignment on a "great figure in computer science" - they were looking for a Turing or a Von Neumann. Some folks did it on Gates. I did mine on Jarvis, because he was the reason I got into computer science. I wanted to make games... In any event, this was back in the day when you could actually email people you didn't know and get a response. I found Jarvis' email on the net, told him about the page I was making and asked him if he had any stuff I could put on it. He sent me a big envelope full of magazine articles, screenshots and floppy disks. Way cool, and it led to a 19/20 on the assignment.

I decided to leave the page up on the web, with a guestbook where people could talk about Jarvis games, and it achieved a very modest noteriety among geeks. A few years passed and it became hard to get people's email addresses. The producers of the TV show NewsRadio decided they wanted to feature Stargate in one of their episodes and wanted to have Eugene play a cameo. They couldn't figure out how to get a hold of him and asked me. I passed them on to him, and he was on the show. (He was one of the moving guys taking the Stargate machine out of the office, hiding his face the whole time). :-)

So, knowing that I wanted to get into the business, and I was a starving student, and I guess feeling a little grateful -- he flew me to a big video game show in Vegas. I got to walk around with a badge that said I was from Midway Games, which started to make me believe that I actually could do it. As an aside, I got severe food poisoning and spent 8 hours in a Vegas hospital - I'm sure glad he paid for my travel health insurance too! (Don't eat at the buffets in Las Vegas...).

A few years later I was driving through Chicago at the end of a big road trip and called him up and he invited us over to his place. His basement is one of the best arcades I've been in. Later we went out for dinner to a Thai place, and Larry DeMar just happen'd to be there (the other half of Vid Kidz) so I got to meet him too. I made a big show of paying for dinner (in thanks for the Vegas trip), whipped out my Mastercard and bzzt - Declined! Tough to describe how that felt... I had a friend of mine pay for dinner and then paid him back, so technically, I bought Eugene Jarvis dinner once. :-)

Anyway, a couple of years later I have my Master's degree in CS and I actually make games for a living! I'm a graphics programmer with BioWare - and I really have Eugene to thank for it. I never really believed it was possible until he let me peek into his world.

Thanks Eugene, I'm living the dream...