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A History of Robotron
blacklily8 writes "Gamasutra has published our history of Robotron: 2084, Eugene Jarvis' ultimate twitch-game of 1982. Robotron's frantic gameplay, intense difficulty, and elegant control scheme made it a hit in the arcade and a favorite of countless retrogamers. The illustrated article compares the game with Jarvis' earlier hit, Defender, describes its gameplay in detail, and traces its roots and impact on later games such as Smash T.V. and Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. Robotron's gameplay may be intimidating, but never too complex to grasp — with both hands!"
The article doesn't mention why there were two joysticks for the game: one to control movement, the other to control direction of fire. So you could travel in one direction while firing in another. Great freedom of movement that made the game very popular because it was such a diversion from most other games.
This is probably one of the coolest bits of trivia from the era: Jarvis had been in an accident, and his arm was in a cast when they started work on the game. It would have been impossible for him to work on the game with a typical "stick and button" approach and he decided the dual-stick design made it easier for him to design and play the game.
[...] The dual joystick control design resulted from two experiences in Jarvis's life: an automobile accident and playing Berzerk. Prior to beginning development, Jarvis injured his right hand in an accident--his hand was still in a cast when he returned to work, which prevented him from using a traditional joystick with a button. While in rehabilitation, he thought of Berzerk. Though Jarvis enjoyed the game and similar titles, he was dissatisfied with the control scheme; Berzerk used a single joystick to move the on-screen character and a button to fire the weapon, which would shoot the same direction the character was facing. Jarvis noticed that if the button was held down, the character would remain stationary and the joystick could be used to fire in any direction. This method of play inspired Jarvis to add a second joystick dedicated to aiming the direction projectiles were shot.[10] Jarvis and DeMar created a prototype using a Stargate system board and two Atari 2600 controllers attached to a control panel. In retrospect, Jarvis considers the design a contradiction that blends "incredible freedom of movement" with ease of use.
Just googled it... it was Berzerk. Could have sworn it was Robotron. Oh well.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
It runs in MAME under the name "Pleiads" because that's what comes up on the screen.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Actually, Defender was a continuation of the Williams pinball machines as far as sound effects went. They used a separate CPU (a 6809 I believe) that ran a set of sound routines that Eugene Jarvis created that were brilliant. The game running on the main CPU would set a flag on the sound CPU to begin the next sound effect, which was done by an digital-to-analog converter tied to the second CPU. Defender also had a power switch under the front of the console, much like a pinball machine!
Many of the sounds on Defender and Robotron came from the classic pinball game Firepower, which was also difficult and ate quarters, but it was so good, we kept feeding it, desperately trying to trigger the killer multiball countdown. You can find this machine in the Visual Pinball/PinMAME arena.
Gottlieb came close, Atari was great, Namco was classic, but nothing could touch the excitement of Williams' late 70's pinball and early 80's videogames.
"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games." - Eugene Jarvis