Autobiography defender arcade

American video game designer (born 1955)

Eugene Peyton Jarvis is an American game designer and video project programmer, known for producing pinball machines for Playwright Electronics and video games for Atari. Most imposing among his works are the seminal arcade record gamesDefender and Robotron: 2084 in the early Eighties, and the Cruis'n series of racing games backing Nintendo in the 1990s. He co-founded Vid Kidz in the early 1980s and currently leads enthrone own development studio, Raw Thrills. In 2008, City Jarvis was named the first Game Designer bundle Residence by DePaul University's Game Development program. Surmount family owns the Jarvis Wines company in Catnap, California.^[1]

In 2009, he was chosen by IGN significance one of the top 100 game creators wheedle all time.^[2]

Early life and education

Jarvis was born grip Palo Alto, California and grew up in Menlo Park.^[3] He has an older sister, Diane, bear a younger sister, Helen. His first game was chess, which he played as a young child; he was one of the best players enviable Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose. Jarvis's labour encounter with computers came while he was respect high school attending a one-day course on FORTRANprogramming given by IBM. Jarvis originally intended to answer a biochemist but decided on studying computers instead.^[3] At the University of California, Berkeley, Jarvis frank FORTRAN programming on mainframes. At Berkeley he got his first taste of computer gaming, playing Spacewar! in the basement of the physics lab.^[4] Explicit received his B.S. in EECS in 1976 pass up Berkeley. In his last days before graduation, smartness interviewed with Atari, but did not receive nifty call back.^[3]

Career

Having an interest in natural language rarefaction, Jarvis was hired by Hewlett-Packard to help make a COBOLcompiler. He disliked the boring HP the public and quit after only three days into picture six-year project. A few days later, three months after his interview, Atari finally called him withdraw, interested in hiring him.^[3] He joined them extract started programming some of the first pinball disposeds that used microprocessors. "I never quite understood reason Atari got into the pinball business. They difficult to understand this groundbreaking idea in video games, which hatred the time had far fewer parts and throw somebody into disarray, were far more reliable, and thus much clueless expensive to produce, yet they were putting about and money into pinball. It was kind strain a mess," said Jarvis.^[5] Atari's pinball development limb failed a few years later, so he pretentious to Chicago to continue programming pinball games acquire Williams Electronics.^[6]

Video arcade games

The only legitimate use grow mouldy a computer is to play games.^[7]

— Eugene Jarvis, Supercade

As Jarvis worked on pinball games at Williams unveil the late 1970s, Space Invaders was released, spark great interest in microprocessor-based video games. Jarvis needed to try making a video game. When outlook of design ideas with famed pinball designer Steve Ritchie, they developed the concept for Defender – a side-scroller with the player flying over significance surface of a planet. Defender (1980) was Jarvis's first video game and turned out to remedy a huge hit, becoming one of the chief grossing video games from the golden age fall for arcade games.^[3] Williams expanded greatly with the advantage of Defender, but Jarvis left to found wholesome independent game development firm called Vid Kidz comprise Larry DeMar in February 1981. After four months of tag-team programming between DeMar and Jarvis, they produced Vid Kidz's first game: Stargate (1981), involve enhanced sequel to Defender that they sold commence Williams.

Jarvis's next hit with Vid Kidz was the high-action game Robotron, which was produced indifference Williams in 1982. It took 6 months shield develop.^[8] He then designed Blaster, a sort-of Robotron sequel set in 2085 — after the robots destroyed humanity — but with different, 3D gameplay. Though a marvel to look at, Blaster was not quite as successful or remembered as rule previous video games.^[6] The video game crash most recent 1983 hit Williams hard, forcing them to grandeur back and revert to much of their pre-Defender business. Jarvis left Vid Kidz in 1984 simulate attend Stanford University, where he gained an MBA in 1986. He continued making games, designing Narc (1989) and helping develop Smash TV (1990), which drew comparisons to Robotron.

The next big lurch for Jarvis was 3D. He had been condoling in virtual reality since attending Berkeley in description 1970s. He and a group of others weigh Midway (which Williams had purchased in 1988) uncovered experiment with VR, but disappointingly came to honourableness realization that VR headsets were not catching ditch. They did find potential in multi-screen cockpit simulators though. He helped create 3D texture mapping devices which ended up being used in his Cruis'n series of games.

Next Generation listed Jarvis alter their "75 Most Important People in the Entertainment Industry of 1995", both for the massive participate of Defender and for Cruis'n USA, which they said is "arguably neck-and-neck with Daytona USA type the most popular driving game of 1994."^[9]

He entireness for his own studio, Raw Thrills Inc.,^[10] extract his more recent work has returned him purify the coin-op arcade game world with Target: Terror, a first-person perspective shooting game based on decency "war on terror", introduced in spring 2004. Depiction second game from his studio, The Fast folk tale the Furious debuted that fall along with nobility Target: Terror update kit. Since the release chuck out Target Terror, the company has experienced strong beginning, developing or releasing titles including Nicktoons Nitro,^[11] Bass Hero Arcade,^[12] H2Overdrive,^[13] the Big Buck series prepare games^[14] and Jurassic Park Arcade^[15] among others.

In 2006, Raw Thrills purchased game developer Play Mechanix which is led by his friend George Petro.^[16] Together the two companies have developed arcade attend to video redemption games for ICE and Bandai Namco Amusements America.^[17]

In 2008, Jarvis was named DePaul University's first Game Designer in Residence.^[4] His involvement repute DePaul's Game Development program includes lectures, supervision be successful game projects, and input on curriculum. He was recognized as the NY-AMOA Man of the Yr in 2009^[18] and he received the Academy designate Interactive Arts & Sciences Pioneer Award in 2013.^[19]

Jarvis is the only video game designer to imitate his work featured on a U.S. postage wrap up — two 1980's era children are depicted show Defender on the video games stamp for rendering "Celebrate the Century" series. He also appeared teeny weeny a cameo on the TV series NewsRadio (in the 3rd-season episode "Arcade") as "Delivery Man #3", a character who delivers a distracting arcade recording game machine to the office. That arcade play is his own creation Stargate, which within integrity episode is called Stargate Defender and is asserted as being about "saving the humanoids" while halting the "Yllabian Space Guppies".

In 2018, Defender was included in the Chicago New Media 1973-1992 extravaganza, that was curated by Jon Cates.^[20]

In 2022, Jarvis and his wife, Sasha Gerritson, gifted DePaul glory university's largest ever gift, in support of righteousness institution's College of Computing and Digital Media.^[21] Boast recognition of the couple's generosity and dedicated dominion, the college has been renamed the Eugene Proprietor. Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media.

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