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RePlay Magazine Podcast - Eugene Jarvis

Replay Magazine Podcast·podcast_episode·59m 51s·analyzed·Jun 15, 2026
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TL;DR

Eugene Jarvis chronicles his legendary career from Atari to Raw Thrills and the arcade industry's evolution.

Summary

Eugene Jarvis, legendary co-founder of Raw Thrills, discusses his 45+ year career spanning Atari, Williams, Bally Midway, and his current company. The interview covers his early work in pinball and video games (Defender, Robotron), the Homebrew Computer Club where he encountered Steve Jobs and Wozniak, the development of Cruisin'' arcade series, the arcade industry collapse post-2000, and Raw Thrills' founding and early successes with Target Terror and the Fast and Furious franchise.

Key Claims

  • Eugene Jarvis worked at Atari in 1977-1978 in the pinball programming department during Nolan Bushnell's tenure

    high confidence · Eugene directly states: 'Yeah, I was there, and I think it was maybe about a year, year and a half, back in like 77, 78'

  • Atari pinball games were unreliable due to poor hardware design, including overheating plasma displays that could catch fire

    high confidence · Eugene describes: 'they put the display and it was these high voltage plasma displays...The thing would just fry itself slowly' and 'Sometimes it would literally catch on fire'

  • Steve Ritchie was the head of Atari's Proto shop and created his first game Airborne Avenger on nights and weekends

    high confidence · Eugene states: 'this guy named Steve Ritchie, who was the head of the Proto shop and he wanted to be a designer. And so he created this, you know, he would drop these playfields in his, you know, at night and on weekends'

  • Eugene joined Williams in 1979 at Steve Ritchie invitation and worked on Firepower, the first multiball electronic pinball game

    high confidence · Eugene: 'one year later, I just said hell with it...I wanted to work with Steve and make some tents. And that was at Williams. So we worked on, I guess, the first multiball electronic pin firepower'

  • Defender was created during Eugene's time at Williams and was a major commercial success, becoming the biggest game of his early career

    high confidence · Eugene: 'That was the biggest game. My first and biggest game I've been working in the last 45 years trying to make a better game'

  • Eugene and Larry DeMar left Williams to start VidKizz after being disappointed with Defender bonuses, creating Robotron and Stargate

    high confidence · Eugene: 'I met a kid named Larry DeMar...I was kind of disappointed, like my bonus was like zero. So we quit and started this company called VidKizz, which went on to do Robotron and a few other games'

  • Cruisin'' arcade hardware system (Cruisin' USA, World, Exotic) was developed by a small team of 6 people over 3-4 years and likely outsold Defender in total units

Notable Quotes

  • “That was the biggest game. My first and biggest game I've been working in the last 45 years trying to make a better game.”

    Eugene Jarvis @ N/A — Reflects on the enduring legacy and impact of Defender on his entire career

  • “I got one. I play it now. I mean, that game is, you know, my reflexes are, you know, my scores are falling. No longer high score.”

    Eugene Jarvis @ N/A — Shows his continued personal connection to his seminal work; humanizes the legendary designer

  • “It was kind of a take under rather than a take over.”

    Eugene Jarvis @ N/A — Describes the morale hit when Williams was forced to absorb the Midway name and management after acquiring Bally's divisions

  • “We had six guys and basically two hardware guys, two programmers and two artists. And we developed...basically the equivalent of like a Sony PlayStation, actually more powerful than that.”

    Eugene Jarvis @ N/A — Demonstrates the technical achievement and efficiency of Raw Thrills' founding team in developing arcade hardware

  • “When the industry goes through these cataclysmic contortions of these great crashes, most people are just like, they go, I'm done with games, and they get a normal job somewhere.”

    Eugene Jarvis @ N/A — Explains the mindset that led him and partners to found Raw Thrills rather than leave the industry after Midway's collapse

  • “I remember like a month into it I woke up in the middle of the night...I don't know, you ever get those like middle of the night like you woke up like what the fuck am I doing?”

    Eugene Jarvis @ N/A — Reveals doubts about starting Raw Thrills but describes being locked in by momentum

  • “I remember Sega Daytona, which is competing against us. You open up their hardware...it was like seven boards that were like, you know, two feet by two feet...we're just like, oh my God, like how did they ever get this thing working once.”

    Eugene Jarvis @ N/A — Illustrates the engineering efficiency advantage of Raw Thrills' bulletproof Cruisin' hardware over Sega's complex system

Entities

Eugene JarvispersonSteve RitchiepersonNolan BushnellpersonLarry DeMarpersonRandy ChiltonpersonAndy (Raw Thrills co-founder)personDeepak (Raw Thrills co-founder)personJoe Cannonperson

Signals

  • ?

    historical_signal: Eugene Jarvis provides detailed firsthand account of pivotal arcade industry moments: Atari's failed pinball venture (1977-78), Williams' dominance with Defender/Robotron era, the arcade boom and crash cycle (1980s-2000), and the transition from arcade to home console/online gaming

    high · Direct testimony covering 45+ years; specific technical failures (plasma displays), business decisions (Williams acquiring Bally), and market dynamics (console competition, online gaming cannibalization)

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Eugene emphasizes the importance of elegant, bulletproof hardware design. Criticizes Atari's overengineered, unreliable plasma displays; praises the Cruisin' hardware's cost-effective single-board design that outlasted 30+ years; contrasts with Sega's bloated seven-board system

    high · 'bulletproof single board system,' 'cost effective design and fairly high performance,' vs. Sega's 'seven boards that were like, you know, two feet by two feet' that barely worked

  • ?

    design_innovation: Eugene describes using real human actors captured through digitization in Target Terror (and earlier NARC) as superior to 3D animation of the era, providing emotional depth, realistic clothing/texture, and multiple death variations

    high · 'we could really, I thought it was really fun working with human actors...you get all the expression...a person could have like eight different death scenes...depending on where you got hit by the bullet'

  • ?

    business_signal: Post-2000 arcade decline driven by: (1) console/home versions cannibalizing arcade experience (Mortal Kombat, Cruisin'), (2) online/multiplayer competition (Farmville, MMOs), (3) over-saturation of arcade venues in 1990s boom, (4) Midway's bankruptcy and shutdown of arcade division

    high · 'why play Mortal Kombat for, you know, $10 an hour when you can just, you know, buy the cartridge for, you know, 20 bucks...the experience was pretty similar...Midway ended up, you know, going bankrupt eventually...arcade division shut down in like 2000'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.180

0:00
Welcome to Replay Magazine's podcast where we'll dive into the legends of interesting stories within the world of what we call coin-op entertainment. That's games and amusement machines you find in arcades, fun centers, bars, restaurants, and beyond. Replay's covered this business for 50 years and is joining forces with industry veteran and former association president Randy Chilton. He is chief revenue officer for National Entertainment Network owned by Japanese amusement giant Kiddleton Jenda. And now, here's Randy in this month's Replay Podcast. Hi everybody, welcome to our monthly Replay Podcast. Today I have the pleasure of visiting with Eugene Jarvis, co-founder of Raw Thrills. It's a fascinating story beginning with his days at Atari, Williams, Bally Midway, then to Raw Thrills. He throws in a few colorful stories along the way. If you're in the coin-up business, no doubt he's made you a lot of money over the years with his hit games, one right after another. It's our first PG-rated podcast, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Get ready for some laughs as I visit with Eugene. Enjoy the podcast. All right. Hey, everyone. Today, we're talking to Eugene Jarvis. You played his games. You know his name. He's probably made you a lot of money, president and co-founder of Raw Thrills. So, hey, we're here to interview industry legends, and there's none bigger than you. So thanks for taking the time, Eugene. Hey, my pleasure, Randy. Where do we find you today? Are you in Chicago? Is that where you live? Yeah, I'm in Chicago. In my office, it's kind of a mess, so I changed my background. I guess I don't know where I am, really. Oh, that's perfect. Well, hey, I want to cover quite a few things here, but we had Nolan Bushnell on here just a few weeks ago, and he was talking about his whole time at Atari. I think there's some overlap here. Is that correct? You were at Atari. Yeah, I was there, and I think it was maybe about a year, year and a half, back in like 77, 78, when, because Nolan, he ended up, you know, he was selling the company to Time Warner at that time. Right. And so I think he sold it, and then he kind of, I don't know, after some point, they had some disagreement or something, and he kind of peaced out for a while.
2:25
But there was a window there that I was working, you know, no one would come down. I was working in the pinball programming department and I was, you know, doing my code and doing the sounds and stuff. And every now and then he would come down and play the pinball games and, you know, had some very spaced out remarks, you know. I remember he wanted to get some psychologist in to evaluate the sound effects of the game or something. And I was like, okay. And he had some just wild ideas, an amazingly imaginative guy. But a lot of it, you're just kind of like, you know, he'll forget about this, you know, the next time he comes by. So this is not an action item.

high confidence · Eugene: 'We had six guys...took us about four years...I think they did probably sold more games than Defender'

  • Raw Thrills was founded by Eugene Jarvis, Andy (co-founder), and Deepak (co-founder, now retired), beginning in the early 2000s after Midway's arcade division shutdown

    high confidence · Eugene: 'Well, let's give a shout out to your partners. You co-founded Raw Thrills with Andy and Deepak, right? Yeah...Deepak retired a while back'

  • Target Terror was developed in approximately 6 months to generate cash flow for Raw Thrills' planned driving game

    high confidence · Eugene: 'we ripped that out in like six months and were able to get some money to finish up the driving game'

  • Raw Thrills obtained the Fast and Furious license after Sega and Namco had passed on it, with help from Joe Cannon at IGT

    high confidence · Eugene: 'Joe Cannon, He was working at IGT at the time...he said, look, I could get you a license for Fast and Furious...I guess Sega and Namco had somehow passed on it'

  • “The thing would just fry itself slowly...Sometimes it would literally catch on fire.”

    Eugene Jarvis @ N/A — Describes the catastrophic reliability failures of Atari's plasma display technology in pinball machines

    • Atari
    company
    Williamscompany
    Raw Thrillscompany
    Midwaycompany
    VidKizzcompany
    Homebrew Computer Cluborganization
    Defendergame
    Robotrongame
    Firepowergame
    Cruisin' USAgame
    Target Terrorgame
    Fast and Furiousgame
  • ?

    personnel_signal: During industry crashes, most talented engineers leave for normal jobs; Eugene and a small core group (Andy, Deepak, and others) chose to restart rather than exit, founding Raw Thrills despite initial doubts

    high · 'when the industry goes through these cataclysmic contortions...most people are just like, they go, I'm done with games, and they get a normal job somewhere' vs. Raw Thrills founders who stayed in

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Raw Thrills' founding team was extremely lean: 6 people total (2 hardware engineers, 2 programmers, 2 artists) developed hardware equivalent to or exceeding Sony PlayStation capabilities over 3-4 years; contrasts with larger competitors' bloated designs

    high · 'We had six guys and basically two hardware guys, two programmers and two artists. And we developed...basically the equivalent of like a Sony PlayStation, actually more powerful than that'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Fast and Furious license secured by Raw Thrills after major competitors (Sega, Namco) passed on it; licensing contact at IGT (Joe Cannon) was critical; name confusion around 'Raw Thrills' initially made licensing partners (Fast and Furious rights holders) hesitant due to porn industry association

    high · 'when they heard the name of our company, like Raw Thrills, they were like, oh yeah, we don't do porn...somehow we were able to...convince them that Raw Thrills was not a porno company'

  • ?

    community_signal: Eugene and his peers demonstrate deep commitment to arcade/game industry despite repeated crashes and near-bankruptcies; describe themselves as 'so lucky to be in games' and unable to accept 'normal jobs' even when facing unemployment

    high · 'We're so lucky to be in games, man...we faced the specter of having to get a real job. Oh, no. We couldn't do it'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: During Cruisin' era, Raw Thrills' bulletproof single-board system significantly outperformed Sega's seven-board hardware in terms of complexity, cost, and reliability. This efficiency advantage allowed Raw Thrills games to survive 30+ years in the field

    high · 'It's been over 30 years and some of them are still running out there in random pizza joints...that cruising hardware system was just bulletproof' vs. Sega's 'how did they ever get this thing working once'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Eugene provides first-hand account of Homebrew Computer Club in mid-1970s, including encounter with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak demonstrating Apple I prototype for $666; offers insight into early personal computer market dynamics (limited RAM, no standards, hobbyist culture)

    high · 'Jobs and Wozniak show up...they were showing off their new board, single board computer, the Apple One...it was for $666...if you, I wish I had bought an Apple I, I think it's now worth like, you know, half a million dollars'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Raw Thrills employed creative cash-flow strategy post-founding: (1) Initial vision for open-world game abandoned due to budget constraints, (2) Pivot to arcade games (core competency), (3) Quick 6-month development of Target Terror gun game to fund longer-term driving game, (4) Fast and Furious license gave two successful games to pay off debts

    high · 'when you start running out of money, your mind becomes very focused...we decided to do a very quick gun game. We could finish that before our money ran out in like a year and then we could use that money to finish the driving game...we ripped that out in like six months'

    • 3:22
    That's pretty good. So were you there? Was that during, I mean, obviously Nolan was there. Was that the Steve Jobs, Wozniak era as well? Or was that, did you overlap with them? Or was that later? No, I think they were gone. I think I might have gotten Steve Jobs' desk because it really smelled like really bad food odor. That was the legend there. That's hilarious. But I saw Steve, actually I saw him like a year or two before then at this, I was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club. That's one of my questions. So please tell us about the Homebrew Computing Club. Yeah, and so it was, I don't know, it was like, you know, 20, 30 guys that were just totally into building their own microcomputers at that time. And there really wasn't, there wasn't an IBM PC, there wasn't an Apple, there was no real standard. And so there was, you know, a number of little companies making hardware and different guys, you know, it was kind of like almost like a hot rodding scene, you know, where, you know, you get the new RAM board and, you know, some guy coming in, yeah, I got like, you know, eight, eight kilobytes. I got eight kilobytes of RAM, man, this is awesome. And then you go, well, what are you going to do with that? Well, you don't understand, I got eight kilobytes of RAM, man. It's like, it's cool. But it was a lot of pining work in video systems and video cards. There was a bus called the, I think it's called the standard of, kind of an early standard of hobbyist computers, I guess based on, I forget Altair. It was the Altair 8008 or something, or 80, I guess maybe 8080. I forget what the hell it was. And then so it was the SS100 bus. So you can get different boards to put in it. And it was kind of an early rendition of like an IBM PC, which came along later. And so there's a lot of different cool video cards and sound boards and boards to run your cassette drive. You could store things on your cassette drive. There was, I guess, paper tape was a big deal, teletypes and paper tape and all that crap. But it was fun, you know, kind of fine airing it. One day, the jobs in Wazniak show up, you know, and they're like Birkenstocks and, you know, T-shirts, and they were showing off their new board, single board computer, the Apple One. And, you know, it was pretty impressive, but you still needed, you know, you need to buy a keyboard, you need to buy all these other things to, you need to get a TV set, you need to get some kind of storage, you know, drive. And so it was not really that practical, but it was a great pioneering single board computer. I think it was for $666. I guess that foreshadowed maybe where we are today, but it was pretty cool. We were like, yeah, it's okay. It doesn't have 16 kilobytes of RAM. It doesn't make, like, this is kind of stupid. So there was all controversies about it, but that was their first product, which was a semi-success, but then obviously they went on to create a true consumer PC, which was the Apple II. And so that all came out of this whole brew club that you started talking about? Yeah, that's certainly the Apple one. And then after a few months, I think they got some funding from some venture capitalist guys. And went out and made a real computer, the Apple II. So, but you know, if you, if you, I wish I had bought an Apple I, I think it's now worth like, you know, half a million dollars or something for that board. Yeah, that's probably about like what kind of like one of your original Defender units, probably pretty darn valuable as well. That was your claim to fame. That was your big one, right? Back in the day? That was the biggest game. My first and biggest game I've been working in the last 45 years trying to make a better game. I'm still working on it. But I think, yeah, a nice defender is probably worth three or four grand or something. Do you have one in your house? I was wanting to know that. Do you have a different game? Oh yeah. Of course, yeah. I got one. I play it now. I mean, that game is, you know, my reflexes are, you know, my scores are falling. No longer high score. But it's, you know, it's a real challenge. I love to play it now and then. I'm really more addicted to my game Robotron, which I enjoyed kicking in the coin door on that one. Great games. I remember them well. We bought lots of them. Hey, we need a little history lesson here. So you were at Atari and then there was the Midway and then there was the Bally Midway and then you went into Raw Thrills. Walk us through that chronology and how that happened, because I understand the leap into raw thrills was not as obvious as it looks to be in hindsight. Yeah, well, just to get historically, so I worked at Atari for a couple of years and then went back to, and I was in the pinball thing. Unfortunately, Atari pinball games were not very reliable. It was kind of the classic case of the new tech guy, we're going to redefine the entire industry. Everything they do in Chicago is complete bullshit. We don't need any of that crap. Of course, they put the board in the bottom of the game and all the screws fell out on it and sorted it out. And the display is overheated and, you know, it was a terrible piece of hardware. Sometimes it would literally catch on fire. Oh, man. It was, they had this display and they put the display, rather than like in the back box, they had it down in the lower arch area, which is right next to the player. I guess the thought was, you're watching the play field and you just glance over to your score, you know? It's maybe more convenient than looking at a back box, you know? But they put the display and it was these high voltage plasma displays, which were kind of the thing in those days. I mean, they looked beautiful, but they had no like cooling vents or anything. The thing would just fry itself slowly. I know. So anyway, I was working with this guy named Steve Ritchie, who was the head of the Proto shop and he wanted to be a designer. And so he created this, you know, he would drop these play fields in his, you know, at night and on weekends and stuff. And so I got to work on his first game, Airborne Avenger. It was probably the first hit game for Atari. Wasn't that a wide body? Yeah, they were all a wide body. I remember that.
    11:28
    But I did five or six games, but just due to the bad design and so forth, they made a lot of money when they worked, you know, but they didn't work that long. I mean, it's hard to find any of them today, you know, surviving. And so Steve peaced out to Chicago and he went to work at Williams, recruited by this guy named Mike Stroll, who was kind of a charismatic leader in that era at Williams. And so he invited me to come out to Chicago and check it out, you know, in like March of that year. And I was like, it was all dusty, dirty, industrial city. What year is this we're talking about? This is 79. Oh, 79. Okay. Yeah. So it was like, it was the rustable before it rusted, coated in grease. And I remember the factory was like, still had the paint job from World War II. You know, this government green, kind of light green. And I was just, you know, the whole city was, you know, just piled up snow and everything. And I'm in California and go, I'm never going to come here ever. And then somehow one year later, I just said hell with it. And I just love to pinball too much. So I wanted to work with Steve and make some tents. And that was at Williams. And how did we get from, you were there for like 20 years or something, right? Quite a while on and off. So we worked on, I guess, the first multi-ball electronic pin firepower. That was a major, major success. What a great game that was. And it's kind of cool because, you know, T.O. was every game is multi-ball, you know. It's such a fun mode. The one I remember is F-14 Tomcott. That was a personal favorite of mine. That had gone all over the place. Yeah, that was my last gasp in pinball. So, let me get to that. So, after Firepower, it was like 1979, a little late. You know, it's amazing how many things I did in like a year or something. Now I can't even like take a shit in a year. You know, it's like, I mean...
    14:06
    That's a different podcast. But I got into, that's just when like the video hit 78 and Space Inuit was just huge. And I guess in Asteroids King, maybe 79. So I was just like, man, we got to do a video game. And so I really wanted to get out of the under the thumb of Steve Ritchie, who I love working with him, but he was, he had, generally, you only lasted like one game under him. As a programmer, you kind of bit off and chewed programmers up for lunch. You know, and a great guy though. And so I saw my chance to go and join you know start a video team And so that was William first role video game other than like Pong clones And so that was just an incredible project. Somehow it was just the blind leading the blind. None of us knew anything about video hardware or anything. And somehow we ended up making Defender. And that was just beginner's luck or something. But anyway, that was huge. And then I met a kid named Larry DeMar who was, I guess, helped me out in Defender bid. And we decided, I don't know, I was kind of disappointed, like my bonus was like zero. So we quit and started this company called VidKizz, which went on to do Robotron and a few other games. And then Stargate, which is the sequel to Defender. And then kind of the video crash hit and, you know, we just like, it was like, okay, this shit is over. It was like disco or the pent rock. It was over, man. Everybody either got laid off or quit. We all kind of went our separate ways for a while. I ended up going out to get my MBA out at Stanford on the West Coast and get some more of that California weather. Yeah, I saw that. But I just couldn't shake that video bug, you know, and I was always thinking about, oh, we can do a new game and there's all this cool new technology and, you know, to create a new hardware system that could, you know, do zillions of colors and, you know, write 10 screens in a 60th of a second and all these crazy things. So also we are talking about HD, which we did this game, NARC, which is an HD game, a little early, too early for its time, but it did quite well. It's just a very expensive game. And we, you know, did some innovation in digital graphics and digitizing actors and all that stuff, which kind of laid the groundwork for some of the later Williams hits like Smash TV and Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, all that stuff. So it was a great project. And then at about that time, so at this point Williams had bought Bally. Okay. So Bally kind of, Bally video kind of, you know, they were at amazing peak when they were building, you know, 1,200 Pac-Mans a day or 1,200 Ms. Pac-Mans or whatever. And they had, you know, things are just much tougher. And so they, I think, just decided they wanted to concentrate on a casino. Yeah. And so we bought their pinball and video divisions of Midway and Valley and so it became Williams Valley Midway for a moment. Okay. And then I remember Neil DeCastro, who was running Williams Valley Midway at the time, was like, It was like, well, you know what? We have to use the Midway name. We paid $5 million for this piece of shit company, so we're going to use their name. And so it was kind of, we felt so defeated because we were Williams and we had destroyed Bally, and now we had to take their name. And then to make it worse, they appointed the managers from Midway to be our supervisors. It was kind of a take under rather than a take over. Take under. Anyway, so I played, there was this game called Race Driving and Hard Driving, remember those? So that was this early 3D polygon driving games that Atari had made. They're really, really amazing pioneering games. And I was like, man, this is like the future. You know, we're going to be 3D, 3D texture mapping, all this stuff. So I decided to resign from Midway and actually took some of the hardware guys. And so we made a deal as a contractor kind of thing that we would develop this new 3D hardware system that eventually became Cruisin' USA, Cruisin' World and all those games of the 90s. And so we, it was pretty amazing. We had six guys and basically two hardware guys, two programmers and two artists. And we developed, took us about four years, give this thing three or four years. We developed basically the equivalent of like a Sony PlayStation, actually more powerful than that, and did the game Cruising the USA. But unfortunately we ran out of money and so we ended up, Neil made a deal for us to come back and finish our game at Midway and so we were able to finish. So we came back to Williams again at Midway, whatever the hell it was. And so that was the whole, you know, Cruising the USA, Cruising World, Cruising Exotic, like the trilogy of driving games, which was very, you know, super satisfying project because I guess all put together, I think they did probably sold more games than Defender. I bet. And you can find those machines on the street today. Yeah, it's the board was, it was just a bulletproof single board system. I remember at the time, you know, we were using DSPs and it was an early, you know, custom GPU and it really was a very cost effective design and fairly high performance. And Sega, I remember Sega Daytona, which is competing against us. You open up their hardware, which is kind of, I guess it was like in the base of the game or something. And it was like seven boards that were like, you know, two feet by two feet. It was like, we're just like, oh my God, like how did they ever get this thing working once, you know? So yeah, that cruising hardware system was just bulletproof. It's crazy. It's been over 30 years and some of them are still running out there in random pizza joints and food courts and whatever. But that was a fun, fun project. And we kind of made this segue to more casual rather than the hardcore games I had been working on. It was kind of more casual everything games for kids and girls and men and women and, you know, even little babies could play it. And just really, you know, on their mother's lap, little kids just sit there and stare at the wheel. So it was really a fun project that kind of really opened up the driving game genre to a game that, you know, I always thought like, hey, why don't they make a driving game where when you turn right, you actually turn right, like skidding into a rock or something. So we gave it a lot of traction and you actually turned right when you turned right rather than, you know, falling off a cliff. Okay, so that was about, what year of your cruise had come out? That was 94. Shortly thereafter, you started Raw Thrills. How did we get there? So that, you know, unfortunately, Midway hit some really tough times. Right. I remember they hired some questionable hires they made, like their new engineering manager guy. It was almost like their most bitter competitor had done their hiring for them. So they had the worst possible people you could ever imagine being hired for key positions in the company. It was just like, oh my God, this is like sabotage by hiring. And it was a complete disaster. And the market was an arcade company. So they had some great success, you know, moving the arcade IP into the home with, you know, Mortal Kombat and M.H.M. and Terminator 2 and obviously the Cruisin' series was launch titles on Nintendo and, you know, just had amazing success there. But then, you know, the arcade business kind of was falling apart. And it was really hard coming up with any new hits in that era. I think that, you know, the market was getting saturated. And I think arcade, you know, there's just more competition with consoles. And the hardcore players that were playing the fighting games and the sports games went over to the, you know, the PlayStations, the Xboxes. And some of the Sega platforms. And so it was a very hard time. You must remember this, Randy. Oh, Randy, there was an arcade on every corner. You'd just go grab a spot and call it an arcade. Yeah, there was way too many of them. Yeah, and it was so, you know, we had a great boom. I mean, it was kind of like a second boom there in the 90s. Right. You know, and then, you know, again, kind of a saturated market and really big competition. I'm like, you know, why play Mortal Kombat for, you know, $10 an hour when you can just, you know, buy the cartridge for, you know, 20 bucks and, you know, that's it, you know. And it seems at that point in time, the experience was pretty similar. Exactly. It was no longer a downgraded experience. It was about the same experience. Exactly. And I think also you had the, you know, the birth of online internet linking, you know, and then the, like, the first person shooting. The frozen shooter genre was huge. The massive multiplayer RPGs, online RPGs. There was just all these great titles and social games. I eventually liked Farmville and all these crazy titles started just competing for players to the arcade. And so really the arcade was dying in many ways. And so it was a tough time. The problem is when places start closing, then there's more games coming into the market. And if you're trying to make or sell games and you're competing with all this used equipment that's very economical, I mean, it gets very hard and locations are decreasing. It's like an inverse, you know, it's a vicious cycle. So Midway ended up, you know, going bankrupt eventually. And so the arcade division, I think, was shut down in like 2000. So the biggest manufacturer in the industry goes under and there's arcades are declining and you say, I would say, hey guys, I got an idea. Let's manufacture video games. That was funny. So a few of us survivors from Midway. I think when the industry goes through these cataclysmic contortions of these great crashes, most people are just like, they go, I'm done with games, and they get a normal job somewhere. And we'd always like, oh man, that poor guy, you know, he got a real job. It's like, we're so lucky to be in games, man, you know, but, you know, we were all unemployed at that point. So, you know, we faced the specter of having to get a real job. Oh, no. We couldn't do it. So we decided to start Raw Thrills. We didn't come up with a name for, I don't know, maybe a year or something. But the initial idea was we were actually going to make some kind of a consumer game, you know, because the arcade was dead and we wanted to make, had a vision that was kind of an open world kind of Grand Theft Auto kind of thing, you know. And so that was Original Vision and we kind of messed around for, I don't know, maybe a year or two and we did get a contract with IGT to do a couple of poker games and some casino stuff. And so we were able to make a little bit of money trying to fund our other project. But it's amazing when you start running out of money, your mind becomes very focused. And instead of this kind of do everything and be everything game, it's kind of like that really focused. Like, okay, what do we, you know, we don't have a lot of money left. What do we know how to do? And like, well, the only thing we know how to do is arcade games. We really don't know anything about home games or console games or PC games. So we said, okay, let's do a, you know, a arcade game. And we thinking well you know Midway when they shut down arcade I think they did million that year in arcade games And they shut it down because it wasn good enough And we were like well you know if we could do like million you know we only had like you know five guys to pay So maybe in our $1 million, you know, there must be something left out there, you know. And I guess at the time we noticed that Batson and Mark Strews, who was the sales manager from Midway, were reissuing some of the old cruising games. And they were selling, I don't know, they sold maybe 4,000 or 5,000 of those. And we got, wow, if they're still selling that crap, then maybe we can make a new game. And so that kind of gave us a little bit of hope that there was a market out there. And so we decided to get a little more focused and so this was kind of an odd strategy. It doesn't make much sense right now, but we decided to do a very quick gun game. We could finish that before our money ran out in like a year and then we could use that money to finish the driving game. It's almost like John DeLorean, I remember when he was selling cocaine to try to bail out his car company or something. He didn't do that. Yeah, at least we weren't getting it. It wasn't that bad. But so we and this was the whole 9-11 thing. This was a had hit. I guess that was 2000 2001 or something. Right. Was that all that hysteria? I remember the.
    31:41
    You know, everybody's everything. There was some mayor and like downstate Illinois, like I need federal security. You know, it could be terrorists in my town here, you know, like and, you know, just like people were getting like kind of crazy. Because it was just such a shocking and terrifying thing. So we decided to kind of do, and this is, I don't know, in hindsight was maybe not the most sensitive thing, but we decided to have a, you know, kind of a Rambo-esque kind of game where, you know, America fights back and, you know, and, you know, defeats the terrorists, you know. And it's like kind of going with everybody's nightmare scenario where the terrorists are attacking the airports and they're attacking the Golden Gate Bridge and they're attacking the Statue of Liberty and hijacking more planes. So that was the birth of Target Terror, which was kind of inspired by the Area 51 games from the 90s. Atari had Area 51 and Max Force, where, again, it used that digitization process. So it was really cool where, you know, you could really, I thought it was really fun working with human actors, which, you know, we hadn't done since the narc days. And it was really cool to, you get all the expression, you know, like have them die, you know, and, you know, grab their nuts and die or something. And so it was like very, you know, just like so much emotion and everything where a lot of the, at that era, the 3D animation was very kind of stiff and robotic, you know. And here we could have, and they could be wearing a coat that's flying and, you know, and have really interesting clothes on that show a lot of texture and wrinkles and stuff. And so it was a very realistic looking medium. You know, just going with the, this is, you know, we're now able to use higher resolution cameras and do some cool green stream technology. And so that, you know, that kind of was the cool thing about Target Taryn. We could have like, you know, seven, like a person could have like eight different death scenes, you know, like you fall over this way, you fall over that way, depending on where you got hit by the bullet or, you know, whatever. So it was all kinds of variety and fun and lots of explosions and body parts and all those good things. Maybe not body parts, maybe that was an arc. Anyway. I remember those days. But that was a fun game and so we ripped that out in like six months and were able to get some money to finish up the driving game, which at that point we had focused in on doing a street racing game and kind of inspired by the Fast and Furious movies. I guess there had only been one movie at that point. And we tried to get the license, but I think when they heard the name of our company, like Raw Thrills, they were like, oh yeah, we don't do porn, you know. So it's like...
    35:08
    So we kind of like... That's some pretty stuff. So we called it Hot Cars Street Racing, was the working title. And it was kind of like, you know, Hot Wheels, but, you know, Hot Cars, you know, whatever. Anyway, and so we'd work on the game and it was getting pretty fun and people would, you know, come by and play it and, you know, I'd explain it to them and they go, oh yeah, it's like Fast and Furious, you know, everybody kept going, it's like, no, it's Hot Cars street racing, you know, it's like, and so we just had a stroke of luck and a friend, a good friend of mine, Joe Cannon, He was working at IGT at the time in the gaming business and doing some really great work there. And he, through his contacts with licensing, he said, look, I could get you a license for Fast and Furious. And we're like, what? And I guess somehow, I guess Sega and Namco had somehow passed on it. And I guess the first movie came out and there was quite a long lag time. And I think maybe they just thought it was dead or something. But somehow we were able to, everybody had passed on it and we were able to, Joe was able to convince them that Raw Thrills was not a porno company. And so we were able to get the Fast and Furious license. And so then that was the Fast and Furious. And what version of Fast and Furious are we on? I can't even keep track. We're on like three or four of us, but I think the movie it's like 10 or 11 I think. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of franchise, a lot of franchise. Yeah, it's been pretty amazing and so luckily with that we had two pretty good games and that paid off all our debts and we were able to continue on. Well, let's give a shout out to your partners. You co-founded Roth Thrills with Andy and Deepak, right? Yeah. They're both still with you? Yeah, actually, Deepak retired a while back. Oh, did he? Yeah, he was the only smart guy in the company. Hey, that's it, they're a little close to home now. Come on. But yeah, those guys, you know, it's funny, they were, we were, you know, thinking about starting, I think it was their idea to start a company, actually. And I was like, this is ridiculous. Like, this is, I'm not going to make this mistake again. I'm done with this fucking industry, you know, like, this is, you know, I've had enough, you know. And somehow they conned me into starting this company and I remember like a month into it I woke up in the middle of the night. I don't know, you ever get those like middle of the night like you woke up like what the fuck am I doing? That hadn't happened to me since Monday. And so that was, you know, I was just like oh my god, it was like too late. I think we'd already started the company, you know, and we were like working in my basement at the time and, you know, looking for an office. And I was just like, oh, God, you know, like, you know, it's like it's almost like, you know, you know, a marriage, you know, you're engaged and they have all these weddings and all this crap. And it's like the whole momentum of the thing, you know, like you're just you're locked. You're locked in even though you're not, you know, like there's just so many ties. And, you know, your mom and this, that, and the other. And you're just like, okay, this is on rails here, you know? And so I felt like, you know, same kind of thing, you know, as the bachelor getting cold feet, you know? But it was like, you know what? We're doing this.
    39:08
    It was now, and I'm still, I haven't gotten off that train yet. So it's been- Please don't. Yeah. Let's see. What else do I want to bring up here? You know, I found it interesting just doing a little research. You get very high praise for your management style, and you're an engineer, you're a software designer. People love working for you. The quote I really love is, one of the most genuinely happy, generous people I have ever met. What's your secret? You know, sometimes I think you really have to have a general high to really be effective. You know, you can't be happy all the time. I think probably these days maybe I'm leaning, you know, it's a good conflict avoidance thing. It's like everything's great and fine, you know. But you do have to, you know, you really have to tell, you have to, it's like when you love somebody, you have to tell them when they're wrong. You know, like love is not just everything's beautiful and we're all, you know, we're all, you know, we have to, if we're on the road to hell, you have to really speak up, you know. And so that's a hard thing. I think a lot of people have problems with that, you know, conflict avoidance. But if you have true love for people, you have to, you know, if things need to be fixed, you need to let them know. But yeah, I just I love working with both the veteran guys. You know, we have guys actually from we still have a few guys from Cruisin' USA working with us. Oh, wow. And, and, which is kind of cool. And we have, you know, we have, we have some young guys and, you know, new grads and old guys, and, you know, it's a good mix. I think you need that mix of, you know, the older you get, you know, everything's everything will everything that fails. And then when you're young, everything's this, everything can be done, you know, and so you need a little bit, you know, of, of the combination of the two, you know, you get a You have to have some reality, but you can't have excess reality to just not want to try anything new. So it's a tough business, but it's a fun business. I think what's fun is you're always working on something new because your games always die. They have a certain lifetime and you almost have to reinvent the company every few years. And so that makes it very interesting, but also it makes it probably fairly stressful sometimes. Yeah, you're in a, you have to take high risks every day. Yeah, you have to make the risk, but if you don't take the risk, you don't get the reward. So it's somehow we've survived, you know, and, you know, it's been, you know, that's what shocked me is that this company has been going for 25 years. And, you know, from that whole cataclysm of the early 2000s, we as an industry kind of re-re-re-went back to our roots, really, in family entertainment, kids, big, very kid-centric. And, you know, I guess kids of all ages. Seems like nobody wants to grow up, which is great for us. People love to, people, socialization is genetic. People want to get out. Yeah. Look at the bowling center industry. They reinvented themselves and you can't get a late on Friday night. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah, no, it's great. You know, and I think part of it's just the phone. You want to get, you know, people want to get away from their phones and just lose themselves. I think that's, you know, it is kind of interesting where the phone is, you know, we spend so much time looking at this little thing. And so we get into an arcade and we see all these gigantic screens and games and stuff. And it's kind of magical for somebody who's been looking at a five inch screen for all day long. I was like, oh my God, look at that. For all day long, I was like, oh my God, look at that. And so, yeah, we just tried to bring magic and excitement to people. I mean, it's the best job in the world if you can hang in there, you know. So a segue into your comment about the games are gigantic. Let's talk about Stranger Things for a minute. Okay. Which is bigger than my first house. How big can these things get? I mean, there's like four locations in American Feds. I don't know. Well, you know, we're, that one is a bit extreme. We wanted, I mean, a lot of these arcades, they love the socialization, you know, and they want to have a game where four people, three or four people can get together and have a blast, you know. So it's kind of running off of that and we decided just for a change of pace and kind of fun thing is to have the balls, throwing the balls rather than shooting an electronic controller. And I think people really love it. It's kind of that physical interaction. And that's the other thing of the arcade is it's the interface of physical and video, you know, and so you get, you know, like people love that. They want to have some physical element You know again they sitting at touch screens and keyboards all day long And so I think that kind of fun So you can get out there actually maybe get a little exercise I mean, God forbid it. And have some fun with a crazy game like Stranger Things. So it is a, yeah, there's nothing guaranteed in this world. You know, that's funny, people ask me like, what did I learn from, you know, I guess I've been in the business 40, 40 odd, almost 50 years, I guess like 49 years I've been in this business, 49 and a half years. And I'm like, what the hell did you, you know, what's your wisdom out of this thing? And I finally realized, you know, the only thing I can say is the one thing I learned is I don't know shit. You know, it's like, because it's always, you know, there'll be some hot new game and I'll hear about it like that's stupid, you know, then you go over there and like, it's the hottest thing ever, you know, and nobody has all the answers, you know, it's, it's, you know, the, that's the, in the world is we all have our different perspectives and different ideas and different places we're coming from. And so that's kind of the beauty of the arcade is you're getting the best of the best, you know, and all the, you know, probably for every game on an arcade, there's, you know, 10 that never went anywhere, maybe more, you know. And so you're not seeing all the crap games that fail, you know, you're seeing just the best, you know, and I think that's why the mix experience so much so enjoyable. I think you just bring up a really good point, you know, being a lifelong operator and you see the high cost of these games, you know, we forget that I don't really have to pay for that game, I got to help you pay off the nine failures that preceded it. Yeah, I can't really charge you for that. I know. It's in there somewhere. Right. So you have to make your hay on the good game. You know, it's like, you know, but yeah, it's a, unfortunately, an issue in the industry. Yeah, that's really good insight. I don't really think about how many didn't work. So that's interesting. Yeah, we don't, we don't think too much about that either. We don't dwell on that. It's like, moving on, moving on. I bet Andy does.
    47:24
    Moving on. You've got to move right along. They don't exist. Like a bomb game no longer exists. It's like anybody associated with it is somehow tainted. I say the same thing about my first marriage.
    47:46
    Yeah. Well, let's see here. You, we're wrapping up here, but I got a couple things I do want to talk about. You're a highly decorated guy in the industry. How do you like the limelight? You were inducted into the New York Operators Hall of Fame in 2009. You're in the Industry Hall of Fame just a couple years ago. Right, right. How do you feel about that? I'm still waiting for my, you know, free dinner or something. You didn't even buy you free, Pete didn't buy you a free drink? No, he sends me the bill. And I'm glad, I'm glad to have a good party, you know, and celebrate things, you know. Yeah, I think, you know, it's funny, it's the most important thing to us, but out in the world, you know, I don't really have to worry about people recognizing me or anything. You know, every now and then, like if I'm out in an arcade show or something, it's fun to meet people. So I go to this big show up in Milwaukee, the Midwest Gaming Classic in the spring. I think it was just a few weeks ago. And I always go up there and give talks. And you meet a lot of young players and crazy, you know, the crazy, the game crazy people, you know, the collectors and the, you know, a lot of crazy little kids. We just call them customers. Exactly. You know, we're always like, you know, you actually think this is, you know, we're always like, we're thinking like, ah, these games. I mean, back in the eighties, if the game was six months old, you just burned it. Right. I mean, you know, cause you've got a new one that's going to make 10 times the money now, you know. So it was just firewood. We used to just call it firewood. But, you know, these people that actually collect all these, some of the most horrible failure games, actually they're worth the money now because they're so rare. You know, so I wish I kept some of these bobs. You know, related to that, there are so many Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man out there. I mean, at the end of the run, which was what, 1990 or so, you know, we're scrapping those things. How I wish I had those today. Oh, my goodness gracious. Talk about machines that are worth a lot of money. Yeah, but you know, just the storage costs, you know, if you try to, you know, I have a bunch of old games downstairs and, you know, every time you turn one on, you know, after a, Six months, it's like, whoops, this one. And I'm like, ah, what happened to the IO? You know, like, it's always something like, you gotta like, you know, clean out the contacts and, you know, they are paying their ass to keep going. You know, you get kind of the, you get to see with the job of the operator, you know, like, why did we put this stupid connector in this thing? Like, you know, we should have put all this stuff on one board so we didn't have, you know, connector problems. I mean, it's terrible when you're the maintenance man of your own designs, you know?
    50:57
    Who do you complain to? Right, exactly. They just realize, like, you know, yeah, we saved five bucks by doing that. Like, yeah, and you made the game fail, you know?
    51:07
    But, you know, we do try. We try to make – these days I think it's super important to make a reliable product, you know, with the cost of labor and, you know, just the service call, you know, just the downtime, you know? And so many arcades and street law arcades, they don't have a tech on duty. So that's something I think the industry needs to work on is uptime and reliability. And I know we try really hard to do that. I know you do. I've heard that real priority for you, reliability. You're thinking about that street operator. So on behalf of all street operators, thank you for that. Because your machines do work more often than not. Hey, what do you do when you're not working? What kind of hobbies? Tell me about your personal life. Well, I like to, the one thing I don't want to do is sit by a computer and try to avoid my cell phone as much as I can. I love just trying to get outside and I love bike riding. I love hiking in the woods, canoeing. It's like in the summer season in the Chicago area, there's so many, you know, there's the Chicago River, which, you know, they don't have too many floating bodies anymore. It's pretty good. And Lake Michigan is beautiful, you know, although you got to watch out in a canoe because the waves can really knock you out. If you aren't careful, man, you're going to be swimming in pretty cold water.
    52:45
    But I love, you know, just kind of getting outside and even, you know, I'm like out in the yard, you know, trying to whack back the whatever plague is attacking my not so well-maintained situation. There's always some new invasive species or something. This spring for some reason I had all these cattails growing in my backyard. There were a couple of years, I was like one or two, like, wow, that's really quaint, there's a cattail. Now they're like 30. I'm like, oh my God, it's like a plague of cattails. It's always trying to keep my wife to pacify the jungle. My son Nate is faithful in a helper, a lawnmower, and a brush whacker. That's kind of fun too. I mean, when you're sitting in office all day, going to the yard and whacking some trees down, I kind of been into chainsaws a little bit. You know, dropping a, you know, a 30 foot tree, just got to get out of the way.
    54:01
    That's pretty funny. But, so it's, yeah, I love just getting outside, any kind of thing outside is what I try to do because I sit at a desk all day long. Well, so what's the, what's the Rothrill future look like five, 10 years from now? You know, that's, yeah, you know, I'm, you know, been in a long time. So I guess I got to actually start thinking about replacing myself at some point. And that's a scary thought, scary and maybe good at the same time, but I think it's really tough. And this industry is so specialized and a lot of the companies, they're smaller companies, they're run by a family or a couple of guys. The guys are very charismatic guy like Jersey Jack or something. And obviously Nolan Bushnell was a, you know, one time Atari was a small coin-off company. And so it's kind of interesting. It's very kind of artisanal. I go and see it's like a big restaurant, you know. You know, instead of making food, you're making games. And so you have to play the games, you know, see how the broth tastes and, you know, add a little salt here. You know, you know, so MSG, don't tell anybody. And so, yes, it's a very personal endeavor. And but you obviously we all face, you know, mortality. And so it's kind of a struggle right now for me. But I'm, you know, I realize intellectually we need to, you know, start thinking about bringing on something. I know Gary Stern has brought on Seth and had great success there. So it obviously can't be done. You just have to spend the time and find the right people. But sometimes you just feel like you're on this treadmill and you're just barely keeping the ship afloat, and then you have to find a new captain at the same time. It's a tough thing, but it's something I had to face up to at that point. Well, biologically, you're a young man and a lot of energy, so you've got some time to figure all that out. I hope so. So what have I forgot to ask that you want to tell your faithful replay readers, which will probably be four or five hundred people? Probably the best attended podcast I've ever done. It could be. You know, people, these podcasters measure their success. Yeah, I interviewed Nolan Bushnell, and you look on YouTube and it has like 50,000 views or something. I'm going, I said, Nolan, there might be like 300 or 400 people seeing this, so don't get nervous.
    56:56
    Yeah, you always worry about, you know, the career ending tweet or something, you know, say the wrong thing, you know, like it seems like maybe people are a little more understanding these days, I don't know.
    57:10
    Any closing thoughts, comments, anything you want to share? Yeah, I don't know. I would say, you know, just from one coin-op arcade lifer to another, you know, I think, you know, we do have the best job in the universe. And sometimes, you know, it's a hell of a lot of work trying to, you know, keep on that surfboard and, you know, and try to get the waves and not get, you know, watch out for the sharks, you know. And so you get, you know, you can get distracted by all those struggles and everything, but I think it takes some time off every now and then just to be thankful for all the wonderful people we've met and all the kids that we've brought Joey to and of all ages and just be thankful that we're all here to have the, you know, be in the best industry ever. Well, what a great way to bring this podcast home. Well, this is certainly the highlight of my month every time I get to talk to somebody like you, and this has been more fun than I expected. So thanks for your colorful stories, and it's our first PG-rated podcast, however. I know, I know. I mean, if you want to break that stuff, don't worry, man. You know, probably save me some embarrassment if my mother watches this. Well, hey, I thank you for your time and just really enjoyed chatting with you. I know we've spent some time together socially, but this is special for me. So thanks for accepting the invitation and sharing some great stories. Thank you, Randy, and thanks for your pursuit of the truth. And, you know, you might even have a better job than I do. You get to talk to all these guys and have fun with them. Well, the only problem with this particular job, it doesn't pay. Well, you know, it's like the more fun you're having, the less money you're working. You know, isn't that interesting? Yeah. If you love what you're doing, it's not worth it. This is a lot of fun. You know, if they're paying you a lot of money, it's probably because you're enduring a lot of pain. Oh, my head's home. All right. Well, thank you, Eugene. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Randy. Thanks for inviting me on. It's been a good class. Bye bye. Game over.