California Extreme, that annual celebration of all games pinball and arcade, hosted its 20th anniversary event last weekend in Santa Clara, California.
Veteran arcade game developers (and Defender co-creators) Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar were in attendance this year, and at one point the pair delivered an intriguing postmortem of their work at Vid Kidz, the indie game company they formed in 1981 after leaving arcade game maker Williams Electronics.
Vid Kidz went on to develop a handful of seminal games for Williams, including the Defender follow-up Stargate and Robotron: 2084, the progenitor (or at least, the prime instigator in the West) of the twin-stick shooter video game genre.
California Extreme attendee Matt Walsh filmed their talk and posted a version up on YouTube that’s well worth watching for anyone who has even a passing interest in the history of Vid Kidz or the design and development of its games.
Note that the video is almost two hours long, and appears to have been captured with a handheld camera from a (front row) seat in the audience.