‘Defender,’ ‘Robotron’ creator still thrives in a coin-op world

Eugene Jarvis had a normal Menlo Park childhood in the 1960s and early ’70s; blowing up Army men with firecrackers, throwing dirt clods at his friends and remaining ignorant of the existence of video games.

Jarvis went on to learn computer programming at UC Berkeley and then, still in his mid-20s in the early 1980s, he designed “Defender” and “Robotron: 2084” — both innovative video games that helped fuel that era’s arcade explosion.

Jarvis is like the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson of arcade games, minus the periods of social withdrawal.

While the most popular games had little variety in pacing, Jarvis’ games had a symphonic quality, with more complicated plotlines.

Jarvis was a molecular biology major at UC Berkeley when a computer course opened his mind.

“I really loved computer programming and, you know, the idea of being able to take over the world with a computer program,” he says, laughing.

The engineers would just hang out at lunch and talk about their lawn sprinkler systems.

Management knew very little about video games, giving Jarvis and his team incredible artistic freedom.

“Defender,” released in 1981, combined elements of “Space Invaders” and “Asteroids” with a save-humankind theme that became common in Jarvis’ games.

Profits were no doubt boosted by the fact that it was fast-paced and the hardest game of its time, where 25 cents might yield only a minute or two of play.

Jarvis returned in the late 1980s to Williams and Midway Games in Chicago, making more well-received arcade titles such as “Narc” (1988), “Smash TV” (1990) and the “Cruis’n” series in the 1990s.

Jarvis now has his own studio, Raw Thrills, which designs high-production-value coin-op games, including “Jurassic Park Arcade.”

[...] he’s happy to see that his work is appreciated.

Since California Extreme started in 1996, classic arcades have made a comeback.

[...] everything from “Grand Theft Auto” to “Candy Crush” and now “Pokémon Go” has proved video games are no longer a fringe back-of-the-smoke-shop activity.