Robotron: 2084 - Legacy

Legacy

Jarvis's contributions to the game's development are often cited among his accolades. Vince considered him as one of the originators of "high-action" and "reflex-based" arcade games, citing Robotron: 2084's gameplay among other games designed by Jarvis. In 2007, IGN listed Eugene Jarvis as a top game designer whose titles (Defender, Robotron 2084, and Smash TV) have influenced the video game industry. GamesTM referred to the game as the pinnacle of his career. Shane R. Monroe of RetroGaming Radio called Robotron "...the greatest twitch and greed game of all time."

Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton of Gamasutra commented that Robotron's success, along with Defender, illustrated that video game enthusiasts were ready for more difficult games with complex controls. Though not the first to implement it, Robotron: 2084's use of dual joysticks popularized the design among 2D shooting games, and has since been copied by other arcade-style games. The control scheme has appeared in several other titles produced by Midway Games: Inferno, Smash TV, and Total Carnage. Many shooting games on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network use this dual control design. The 2003 title Geometry Wars and its sequels also use a similar control scheme. The input design was most prominent in arcade games until video games with three-dimensional (3D) graphics became popular in the late 1990s. Jarvis attributes the lack of proliferation in the home market to the absence of hardware that offered two side-by-side joysticks. Most 3D games, however, use the dual joystick scheme to control the movement of a character and a camera. Few console games, like the 2004 title Jet Li: Rise to Honor, use two joysticks for movement and attacking.