Hello!
By TT
Alright? TT here. Again. Well there I was wandering around aisles of the ATEI exhibition on January 25th (google it muppets), when who should I bump into but our old friend, designer of 80’s legendary arcade games Defender and Robotron, Eugene Jarvis! “Huge” kindly put up with me for all of 3 minutes (he was working and looked real busy), and we chatted about some stuff, and took a few snaps. Here my friends, is a transcript of that snatched conversation…
Those aren’t his hands by the way..
(As I spy my target from a distance, and pounce like a cat interrupting a conversation with an important looking Chinese bloke – hey, our man Jarvis looked like he needed rescuing OK?)
Hey Eugene! How’s it going? TT from Way Of The Rodent!
(After a split second of “oh my god who the fuck are you”) Oh…yeah…hey…hey buddy! How’s it going! (shakes TT’s hand vigorously to the point of numbness) We spoke last year didn’t we?
Yeah we did – Christ, you remembered?
Yeah I remember that coat! (laughs)
TT with Eugene Jarvis. He’s got his arm round me in that picture and everything. I may never wash again.
Ah ha! It could be worse I could have worn my green shirt – oh, I see you did!
Haha! So hey, how are the guys and how’s the website?
Great thanks! We’re enjoying ourselves. Printing up more T-shirts – do you still wear yours?
Hell yeah! And I’ve got more than one! When I wear it, people come up to me and say “Jesus Christ Eugene is that YOU? Goddamm it IS you!!”
It was a best seller for us I believe…Your mug is on t-shirts throughout the land!
Yeah that’s cause I bought them all! (laughs manically)
War hole. Fnar.
More to the point what’s happening with you? What brings you to London?
We’ll I’m here at the ATEI exhibition at Earl’s Court to promote to the gaming industry some new arcade machines we at Raw Thrills have been working on. As you know Namco distribute our machines for us here in Europe.
Nice one. So what’s this game here? “Big Buck Hunter Pro”. I saw you playing and writing down some notes? (we start to play)
Well some things about it still piss me off, and I want to correct them.
Gulp… Eugene (right) gets it on with Big Buck Hunter Pro.
Still a perfectionist then?
Hah! Maybe – the hardware we use allows us to update the games at any point – kinda like a patch on a PC game. So if there are improvements to be made I say we make ‘em you know?
Hmm… an arcade game based on hunting live animals. Do you think it’ll go down well in the UK? We don’t really have a gun culture here….
Well I think we just need to suck it and see. You can’t shoot foxes here right? Well if Time Crisis 4 works, there’s no reason why this wouldn’t – it’s essentially a great game…I mean it is only a videogame, right?
Eugene’s current pride and joy. (Notice obi-wan in the reflection)
Err… Yeah! And what else are you showing this year?
Well there’s “F&F Super Bikes” – a multiplayer motorbike racing game – its still in early production, but we got them here so get some feedback from the players. And of course we have the Fast and the Furious car racing game – this year we’ve added the moveable cab and seat which really adds to the experience! (Eugene introduces me to some guy who did the hydraulics on the new cab).
Eugene’s new arcade simulator. (note: this is a lie)
They look great – nice one. Have you played much else here this year?
I’ve not had chance to look around, but I can see the usual suspects here – Tekken 5, Time Crisis 6 or whatever – pretty much what you’d expect.. The virtual pinball machines look pretty cool.
Virtual pinball. What a waste of a plasma...
OK, well I wish we could talk for longer Eugene, but I can see you’re here to sell stuff, (there is literally a queue of important looking people waiting to talk to Mr Jarvis) so I’ll love you and leave you.
No problem, give my best to the guys and hey – see you next year! We’ll talk for longer then!
So off I toddled to see the rest of the show. So what else was there? Well, being a trade show, it wasn’t really geared up for ticket-blagging members of the public like me, so it actually wasn’t that interesting for the most part. But amongst the kiddie rides, skimpily clad Sega girls and fruit machines set on freeplay, there were a few interesting things:
Of particular note was a new football game from Sega, “Champion Football”. This huge machine had a large screen which sat above the sitdown cab itself, and each player had access to a smaller screen in front of them. To play, players purchase various Panini type cards with footballers’ stats on them which you loaded up into the screen via a card reader – this builds your team. When ready, players go head to head on the main screen. It seems more RPG style to me than action based (and more than a little reminiscent of that kiddie sized thing with the insects – Ed) but a great concept nonetheless – social gaming at its best. Assuming it catches on, I suspect this will be huge when it comes over here in the summer.
"I like the innovative little red basket best."
Elsewhere, Tekken 5 looked very polished and seemed to have drawn every puffy-jacketed oik within a 20 mile radius, whilst House of the Dead 4 was stopping passers-by dead in their tracks with it's sumptuous visuals.
Spot the zombie.
And to be honest, that was about it. One thing was clear, the way forward in terms of ejecting cash from your pockets, dear Rodents, is gambling – online, offline and mobile. The place was full of companies all trying to sell their wares in this field. Every one of them staffed by lairy-suited second hand car salesmen. Was anyone actually working, that’s what I want to know – from what I could see, everyone was either chatting up the booth chicks or playing something or other.
Still, nice to catch up with Eugene, eh?
February 2005
|
