Eugene Peyton Jarvis is an American game designer and video game programmer, known for producing pinball machines for Williams Electronics and video games for Atari. Most notable among his works are the seminal arcade video games Defender and Robotron: 2084 in the early 1980s, and the Cruis'n series of driving games for Midway Games in the 1990s. He co-founded Vid Kidz in the early 1980s and currently leads his own development studio, Raw Thrills Inc. In 2008, Eugene Jarvis was named the first Game Designer in Residence by DePaul University's Game Development program. His family owns the Jarvis Wines company in Napa, California.
Jarvis speaks during the Vid Kidz panel at California Extreme 2016
Defender (1981 video game)
Defender is a horizontally scrolling shooter developed by Williams Electronics in 1980 and released as an arcade video game in 1981. The game is set on either an unnamed planet or city where the player must defeat waves of invading aliens while protecting astronauts. Development was led by Eugene Jarvis, a pinball programmer at Williams; Defender was Jarvis's first video game project and drew inspiration from Space Invaders and Asteroids. Defender was demonstrated in late 1980, before entering production in early 1981. It was distributed in Japan by Taito.
Eugene Jarvis, a pinball programmer at the time, headed development of Defender.
An American Marine playing Defender aboard a naval ship in 1982
A 2002 remake with the same name has gameplay elements similar to the original, but with 3D graphics.