‘Robotron: 2084:’ Tribute to the greatest video game of all time
“Robotron” co-creators Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar are speaking at this weekend’s California Extreme classic arcade games show in Santa Clara.
version of this tribute ran on the SFGate.com blog the Big Event in 2014.
From a financial perspective, buying one makes a little less sense than buying a handful of magic beans, or a 1981 Fiat Spider.
“Robotron” is, with no hesitation, the greatest video game that I’ve ever played.
The 1982 Williams Electronics game was a product of the early 1980s, the last era when innovative things were easy to explain.
[...] “Robotron” was like that over-the-top crazy/violent five minutes in a Sam Peckinpah film, repeated on a loop.
At a time when metronomic video games seemed designed to lull you to sleep — many even had patterns — “Robotron” was pure unpredictable chaos.
The genius was in the pioneering two-joystick scheme: one for movement and one to control a rapid-fire laser.
Each level featured a legion of robot/alien bad guys, with various levels of indestructibility, encroaching from all sides.
During the first couple of years I played “Robotron,” it seemed like the game was over before my quarter hit the bottom of the coin slot.
Even though it was the stated objective, my motivation for “Robotron” was never to save humanity.
[...] the thrill was in the furious battle, sometimes wading through waves of advancing enemies and their gunfire and emerging through the gantlet like a surfer coming through the barrel of a particularly vicious wave.
The problem with “Defender” was accessibility; it involved a high level of coordination, compared with the much more muscular “Robotron.”
Jarvis was friends with Steve Ritchie, the greatest pinball machine designer of the 1980s and current era.
While many of his contemporaries went on to console games and other tech ventures after the industry cratered in the mid-to-late 1980s, Jarvis continued designing old school stand-up arcade games, and continues to make them 30-plus years later.
[...] if I manage to keep the boy unharmed throughout the level, no harm will come to me.
Vice City, and realizing I could flip the radio channels like a real car stereo.