Southampton, 1980. I didn't feel like going to the football (sorry, Saints fans) so I went for a walk on the Common, where I knew there was a fair in town. I went in search of the arcade tent – the way you always did, hoping to while away some time and change with Spacies and Galaxian and Asteroids, my new-found friends.

Something was different, though. One machine was standing outside the entrance to the main tent – on display, new, and picking up a lot of attention. Intrigued to see what new challenges the designers of these endlessly fascinating entertainment devices had come up with, I took my turn at the controls and put in my 10p...

…and had my arse handed to me, brutally and thoroughly. Again and again and again. But I kept coming back for more until my pockets were empty...

Sure, it was brutal, but it was so different. You had to actually learn to fly the ship. There was a radar, and the world didn't fit on the screen. And the explosions... not just some sprite popping up momentarily, looking like a bit of cotton wool. Here, things really exploded into their component atoms like colourful fireworks. And enemies didn't just appear – they imploded. And they had independent missions... if you didn't take care to patrol the whole world then enemy actions would precipitate events that would destroy you very quickly indeed. There was much more to this game than simply dodging bullets and staying alive. Not only did you have to learn to fly, but you had to think and plan – quickly, and under a lot of pressure.

The UK Burlesque Videogame Emporiuirururm. Hardly Flynn’s Place, but still…

Even the sound effects were from another world... deep, resonant humming, crackling explosions, satisfyingly solid thumps (on the rare occasion one actually managed to line up a shot and destroy an enemy). Too often the only enemy deaths that occurred were accompanied by a beautiful white shellburst of an explosion signifying that I had tanked my precious ship into something bad yet again. Sure, the game was brutal. It took no prisoners (well, it did, I suppose – and it did horrible things to them and turned them against you), but it was fair. You knew that if you could only learn to fly then you'd be able to turn the tide...

No other game got any attention from me that afternoon. I left when I ran out of money, and walked back to my gran's place deep in thought about what I had just experienced. It seemed to be a big step forward in the potential of videogames, and as an amateur game designer myself I was fully impressed. Such exquisitely terrifying – yet balanced – gameplay... brutal yet fair. And oh, those explosions and those sounds. Whoever had put that thing together was certainly a visionary and a genius.

I didn't know his name then, but that was the first time I ‘met’ Eugene Jarvis.

A couple of years passed, and at every available opportunity I worshipped at the shrine of The Master's creations. I became tolerably good at Defender, but never awesome. Still, each game was always a joy, even when I got my teeth kicked in. Firm but fair, and absolutely exquisite every time. I looked at the game with the eyes of a fledgeling designer as well as a player, and I hoped that one day I might be able to make something that was a tenth as good.

One day, the local arcade got a new machine in, and they thought it special enough to run an ad in the local paper announcing its arrival. "Williams’ Robotron has arrived!" it said. And I remembered the way that "Williams" was spelled out on the attract screen in Defender, in glowing red letters, and I salivated at the thought of experiencing a new design by the guy who did Defender. I drove to the arcade and there it was, glowing and burbling to itself… TWO joysticks for the controls.

Of course, you know what happens next. I put my 10p in and, once again, had my sorry arse handed to me on a platter. This was what I'd come to expect from a game by the man who I now refer to as Huge Euge (‘huge’ as in ‘awesomely skilled’ rather than big in stature, that is). Once again, the experience was to have a profound impact on me.

One day, every kitchen will be like this.

Robotron was so beautiful, so simple and so pure. The aim was obvious, the controls straightforward, and the game made it quite plain what you had to do to survive. At the start of each level you could see everything that you needed to evade or destroy, and everything that you could use to help you survive. It was all there for an instant before the onslaught began. And what an onslaught. The game had more individual enemies on one screen than anything I’d seen before, and at first, the odds seemed overwhelming. But, as with Defender, the balance was exquisite – the player was given great manoeuverability and firepower and despite the high difficulty the game was always fair. Every time you died you knew that it was your fault. Had you played better, you would have survived. These games taught me a lot as I learned to be a designer myself.

Visually, it was beautiful, too. Explosions even better than the ones in Defender, with enemies shattering into lines that flew apart spectacularly. Sonically, it was another thriller – with the same distinctive style of audio effects. Once again, I emerged from the arcade with a big smile, empty pockets, and sore arms from pushing and pulling the joysticks all afternoon. And once again, I was full of admiration for the man and profoundly influenced by the quality of his design.

Things moved on for me, and I turned pro myself. Mostly Commodore 64 stuff, and definitely the Sunday League compared to the Premiership of coin-op game design, but I was having fun and it was paying enough for me to work at it full-time. In my workroom stood one of Huge Euge's lovely machines – the sequel to Defender, Stargate. It was one I'd missed in the arcades – more challenging, more complex to control, and more pyrotechnically exuberant than its predecessor. And when I wasn't trying to make games myself, I'd worship at the thing, wearing calluses onto my fingers from the joystick. I became fairly good, but not God-like.

Yak worships at the Euge-shrine.

Sometimes, Llamasoft would get letters from people and they'd ask to drop in and visit when they were passing, and I always liked that. It was nice to meet the people who played my games and show them where I worked (and let them play on Stargate or one of the other coin-ops). There was one kid who came to visit on a few occasions – his mum would drop him off at mine and we'd spend the afternoon talking about coding the '64 and playing games. Nice lad of about 14, called Jake. Definitely knew his way round a 6502, that lad…

Ten years or so later, sometime in 1994, I was working on Jaguar VLM at home in my house in Wales, when I got a phone call. It was Jake – and those coding skills had obviously served him well, because he was working at Midway in Chicago. Not that, he was working in the same place as Huge Euge – on coin-op games. We chatted for a while (he was a big Hellgate fan and he talked of slipping a version into some Midway game as an easter egg) and I mentioned that I'd be in Chicago myself soon (demonstrating the Jaguar CD-ROM at the Consumer Electronics Show). Jake said he'd drop by the show and say hi, and that if he could... maybe... if he wasn't too busy... Huge Euge Himself might drop by too.

Jag VLM. It might look like a hanky press, but it
brought Yak and Euge together.

I was very excited. I try not to be a fanboy – having been on the receiving end of it in very small part occasionally, I know it makes the object of veneration feel quite uncomfortable sometimes. But the idea that I might get to meet the man who had designed the games that I thought of as some of the best in the world, from whose work I had learned so much and who had had a profound influence on my own style of design... to be able to shake his hand and thank him in person for all of that goodness and for all the pleasure I had had playing his games over the years... aww, I was grinning like a schoolboy at the prospect. I even took along a Defender marquee and a big fat marker pen. If I was going to meet Euge, I wanted his moniker on it.

The show was a couple of days in when I got a tap on the shoulder, and there was Jake – not a kid any more, but recognisably Jake. He said: "I've got someone with me you might like to meet”…

And there he was – Huge Euge Himself - tall, much less hairy that I expected (the pictures I'd seen of him had shown him as quite hirsute), with an intense, lively gaze and a big, ready smile. Of course, for a few seconds I was a complete fanboy – in awe of the man, sheepishly shaking hands and mumbling out my appreciation and respect for his works. After all, not only had those games brought me huge amounts of enjoyment, they gave me the inspiration to pursue a career in videogames myself. Eugene was really nice and friendly about my gibbering, though.

The three of us sloped off to a bar area at the show hall (under the circumstances, I decided to take the afternoon off from demonstrating the Jag CD-ROM) and he bought us all a beer and we sat and chatted. I asked him about Llamatron - had he seen it, did he mind that I'd made it? He told me he'd seen it, he didn't mind I'd made it, and that he LIKED it. I think you could have killed me at that point and I would have died happy. We went and hung out some more in the exhibition hall and dropped by the Atari stand where I got him to have a go on Tempest 2000. He told me about the time when Defender first came out and Tempest was considered to be a close rival. He gave every appearance of enjoying playing my humble Jaguar update, and I wonder if he saw in the pixel-shatter effects of that game the blatant influence of the explosions from the likes of Defender and Robotron - I hope he did.

Euge gives Tempest 2000 a whirl, while looking at YOU.

At the time, Eugene was working on Cruis'n USA, and Midway were demonstrating it behind closed doors at a location a few blocks away from the exhibition centre. I was quite interested to see that, since it was supposedly running on something which was akin to Nintendo's upcoming N64 hardware - still, at that stage, only known as ‘Project Reality’. Eugene said he could blag me in by lending me a Midway employee's name tag, and so we left the exhibition and bundled into his car (which was yellow and which he drove with vim and vigour, I recall). I got in with no trouble, and spent a happy hour or two hanging out and having goes on the Cruis'n machine there, until it was time to go back to the exhibition hall and for Jake and Eugene to depart.

And that was my afternoon chilling with Huge Euge. I'd like to say I asked him all kinds of insightful questions about the old days and what it was like working on the games back then, but I figured he must get that kind of thing all the time, and anyway I was a bit too shy and a little bit awestruck. I know I shouldn't have been such a fanboy, but I couldn't help it – I have such massive respect for the man. As it was, I had had a thoroughly pleasant afternoon hanging out with one of my all-time heroes, who had proven to be a lovely bloke, putting up with my awkwardness graciously and making me feel at ease and like a friend. It's really nice when you meet someone you have venerated as a hero and they turn out to be a really nice bloke with it.

I owe many thanks to Jake for bringing the man himself to meet me, and to Eugene not only for taking the time that afternoon to hang out with me, but also for the positive effect and influence his work has had on my own over the years. He has truly been an inspiration.

The only sad part of the tale? The stupid marker pen I'd bought didn't write well at all on the shiny surface of the Defender marquee, and although Eugene did sign it for me, it was a bit faint and didn't adhere well, and although I wrapped the marquee in film to try and prevent the fading and erosion of his signature, by now it’s all but invisible, and the marquee just looks normal.

But I know it was signed by one of the videogame Gods Himself, and that's good enough for me.

Jeff Minter, February 2004.

Comment Here. (Its working again).

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Things to 'Make' and 'Do'.

Where the Yak roams.

How to play Robotron. It’s easy.

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We've just spotted that Midway Arcade Treasures is out in the UK today. It's got Eugene's Defender, Robotron and Stargate on it - As well as loads of other stuff. I only hope that Mr Jarvis still gets a royalty. Oh, and amazon are doing it with a fiver off too. Click one of the links below and go play!

Midway Arcade Treasures (PS2) - £14.99

Midway Arcade Treasures (Xbox) - £14.99

(Prices correct at 6th January)