Eugene Jarvis, the influential game designer best known for his work creating seminal arcade titles like Defender and Smash TV, delivered an upbeat classic game postmortem of his work on Robotron: 2084 at GDC 2014. Jarvis, who currently serves as president and cofounder of the Raw Thrills arcade game studio, spoke at length about the creation of the arcade classic and revealed some interesting insight into the play mechanics, hardware, software, enemy dynamics and sound synthesis of Robotron. Drawing from his experiences in the industry, Jarvis also explained how Robotron's revolutionary dual-joystick control scheme was conceived and why the classic top-down shooter's wave-based survival combat seems to remain so appealing more than thirty years after its 1982 release. Footage of his talk was recorded by the GDC team, and it's well worth watching for anyone with even a passing interest in classic game design. We've taken the liberty of embedding the free video of "Classic Game Postmortem: Robotron: 2084" above, but you can also watch it here on the GDC Vault.

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers. Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support. Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech