Eugene Jarvis to receive IGDA's Lifetime Achievement Award

Arcade game designer Eugene Jarvis, whose titles include Defender, NARC and Smash TV, is to be honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the IGDA at the Game Developers Conference next month.

Jarvis is perhaps best known for Defender, which was one of the biggest arcade hits of the early eighties, and he went on to follow it up with titles such as NARC, Robotron:2084 and Smash TV in the eighties, and the Cruis'n racing series in the nineties.

He will be honoured with the lifetime achievement award at the Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony on Wednesday, March 9th in San Francisco, and has been selected by development peers from across the globe on the Choice Awards Advisory board.

"Eugene Jarvis is one of a handful of names that comes up again and again as the inspiration for other game developers," according to IGDA executive director Jason Della Rocca. "He understands what is fundamentally fun and continues to impress us with his endless creativity and talent."

Previous recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award include Sonic creator Yuji Naka, The Sims creator Will Wright, prolific Nintendo inventor Gunpei Yokoi and platform game design legend Mark Cerny.