Eugene Jarvis

This book explores the influential work of Eugene Jarvis, designer of the wildly-successful arcade games Defender, Robotron: 2084, NARC, Smash TV, and Cruis’n USA, among others.

Embracing a variety of genres across decades, the video games of Eugene Jarvis offer a series of design lessons in how to craft coin-operated game machines that can survive and thrive even as the arcade was disappearing from the American landscape. In particular, his titles demonstrate the enduring appeal of gameplay challenges, taboo content, and possessing a larger-than-life form factor and accessible gameplay. Drawing upon multiple interviews with Jarvis and his collaborators, as well as scholarly reflections on game design, historic industry data, and archival documents, this book makes the case that Jarvis is the unparalleled “King of the Arcade” for his ability to craft gameplay experiences that cannot be replicated on home consoles or personal computers.

Author Biography

Matthew Thomas Payne is Associate Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, USA. He is author of Playing War: Military Video Games after 9/ 11 (2016), co-author of Ultima & Worldbuilding in the Computer Role-Playing Game (2024) and is co-editor of How to Play Video Games (2019), Flow TV: Television in the Age of Media Convergence (2011) and Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games (2009).