Eugene Jarvis - Video Game God

It all starts with game programming god Eugene Jarvis. Eugene programmed three of my all-time favourite video games - Defender, Joust and Robotron. His games are characterized by addictively hard gameplay, brilliantly orignal design and killer sound effects.

Defender

The first time I saw Defender, my friends and I had just been to the swimming baths and afterwards we headed over to the local arcade. We were all addicted to playing games, and spent most of our pocket money playing them.

That night we saw Defender for the frist time, two Defender machine had arrived! We watched the attact mode and oooh'ed and ahhh'ed. Dez (my fellow Star Wars maniac friend) played it first. "Wow, check out those lines for bullets", "The sound effects are brilliant!". What do we do?". It took much cash and watching the older kids play until we figured out the game. My high score is around 200,000 which isnt easy to score. Like all of his games, by wave #4 they ramp up so insanely hard, it''s laughable.

Sound Effects

• Complete Wave (defender)
• Die (defender)
• Capture Humanoid (defender)

Robotron

These days I'm playing Robotron. 23 years later, this game is still as addictive. I was on holiday in Devon, England when I first played this game. Seeing the new video games in the seaside arcades was always one of the highlights of the trip.

This is funny... We had a Robotron machine at my old office. After lunch I was heading into the arcade to the play, and I saw this programmer walking towards me completly blissed out and wide eyed on a total high yelling at me "I just scored over 300,000. 300,000!!". The look on his face was unbelievable. LOL!

Sound Effects

• Start Level (robotron)
• Complete Level (robotron)

Joust

Again we had this in our local arcade. We'd pump 10p after 10p into the machine to play. 23 years on, still an awesomely addictive game to play. There's some great sound effects in Joust. Listen below..

Sound Effects:

• Start Wave (joust)
• Materialize (joust)

Kormacurry Banned From Local Arcade!

When I was around 12 years old I was banned from the local arcade - because I was too good. The owner kept yelling at me "Your not coming in, your too good - nobody else get's to play". . This was not good. Being persistent I kept hassling the guy, and eventually after a year he let me back in "Alright, you can come back in .. but you can only play certain games!". I couldn't play Scramble, Donkey Kong or Gorf. Whateva.

Play Eugene's Games Here:

• Defender (Shockwave Arcade)
• Joust (Shockwave Arcade)
• Robotron (Shockwave Arcade)

Links:

• Eugene Jarvis Interview (Way Of The Rodent)
• Eugene Jarvis (WikipediA)
• Defender, gameplay, operating manuals (Coin-Op Museum)
• Joust (Coin-Op Museum)
• Robotron (Coin-Op Museum)