Exclusive: Eugene Jarvis on Cruis’n Blast and the “joy” of working with Nintendo again

The news of that arcade title Cruis’n Blast Heading to Switch was a pleasant surprise earlier this year.

The latest in the long-running Cruis’n series, which started in the arcades of the 90s with Cruise’n USA Before making the leap to the N64, this neon-colored racer promises to deliver a high-octane arcade experience on Nintendo’s hybrid system, and is courtesy of Raw Thrills, the studio established by industry legend Eugene Jarvis, the driving force. (no pun intended) on the original Cruis’n USA.

Jarvis shouldn’t need an introduction; His video game credits include some of the most seminal arcade hits of all time, such as Defender, Stargate, Robotron: 2084, Smash TV and DRUG TRAFFICKER. We were lucky enough to talk to Jarvis about Cruis’n Blast, working with Nintendo, and his brilliant career. Enjoy.

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Nintendo Life: Can you give us a little background on how Cruis’n Blast came to be? What made you decide to create a new entry in the series in 2017?

Eugene Jarvis: I have a classic video and pinball arcade in my basement and every time we have a party, once the kids see the old Cruis’n drivers, they go crazy with them for hours. It is very difficult to make them go home. And then there are the moms and dads who grew up on Cruis’n and jumped into action too! So if games from 25 years ago are so much fun, how about we make a new Cruis’n arcade game? It would be a rush to see what a Cruis’n controller would look like today with 1000x better graphics and computing power.

Some team members were skeptical about how such an old title could be relevant in our crazy new era of gaming. When we first played the new theme song, they couldn’t stop laughing and then dancing to the outrageous retro disco vibe. Then there was the question of what to call the game. Cruis’n for a Bruis’n? There were many candidates. I liked Cruis’n 4-Ever a bit because it was like the fourth game in the trilogy. So we made a bunch of wheels with ‘4’ on them for the logo, but something just wasn’t right.

After what seemed like months of silly names, we came up with Cruis’n Blast. I loved that “Blast” is both a blast (this was the first Cruis’n game to have a turbo-boost feature, which we called “Blast”) and also because we wanted to capture the fun and casual driving environment of Cruis’ n (having fun!).

Now that I think about it, we should have put an exclamation point at the end! There is always a next time …

How practical was Nintendo with this release? Did you provide any comments or advice during development, or were you given complete freedom?

Nintendo really was great. They are the owners of Cruis’n IP, so it was a real honor to gain their trust to develop the game on the Switch. As arcade game developers, we knew very little about the Switch, and John Vignocchi and the third-party team at Nintendo of America really helped us every step of the way. They gave us a lot of feedback and advice on how to take the core of the arcade game and fill it with tons more gameplay and content that the multitude of consoles demand. Then they basically let us loose to make the best Switch game possible.

Nintendo censored Cruis’n USA on the N64 – has there been any danger of that repeating for the Switch version of Cruis’n Blast?

Yes, we had some edgy “humorous” content in the past! This time, Nintendo really gave us a free hand.

Did you face any problems installing an expensive arcade game on a relatively low-powered portable system like the Switch?

The project really started out as something of a “what if” joke about the ridiculousness of trying to cram a high-end arcade piece into the Switch. I mean, where is the Nvidia 32 gigapixel graphics card and the 5 GHz CPU? But truth be told, we were very surprised by the frame rate and quality of the graphics, even when zoomed in on a large family room LED flat panel display.

Not to mention it was a walk in the park. I guess our artists and coders had a lot of free time during the pandemic to tweak the code, graphics, and frame rate to the max. When you can’t go anywhere or do anything, work can be very interesting. For the shaders and effects to look great, especially it took a ton of blood, sweat, and tears. This was our game and we couldn’t blame anyone else for a shitty port.

What makes the Switch version of Cruis’n Blast superior to the original arcade? Have you made any adjustments or improvements for this edition?

The console and arcade experiences have a lot in common, but since home gamers have the time to quickly max out a game, you need megatons of content. So we went from five tracks and 12 cars to, get it, 29 tracks, 23 cars, dozens of secret shortcuts and new hidden vehicles. In addition, we have many new “turbo ramps” with cash rewards and 87 keys to unlock all these benefits. In short, there are a lot of Cruis’n going!

The arcade version was updated after launch with new cars; Planning to do a similar trick with the Switch port via DLC?

We hope that player demand will be there so we can produce more exclusive Cruis’n content for Switch. There are many dream cars and tracks that artists want to bring to life.

What is the future of the Cruis’n series beyond Blast? Do you have plans for more games?

We’ve been throwing out some ideas – one thing I’ve been throwing in is remastering the classic arcade Cruis’n trilogy, especially for the Switch, upgrading the content to Full HD and a solid 60Hz frame rate! And I think some of the best ideas come from the Cruis’n players. We hope to hit all social media on the launch date (Twitter, Insta, YouTube, and TikTok) to see what the Cruis’n meme trends are.

Your career in videogames will be the envy of many; What do you think of modern game development? Do you think there is room for old-school experiences like the Cruis’n series in 2021?

It’s crazy, but I started making arcade games on Atari in the 70’s, 44 years ago! It seems like five or six lives on the journey from Stink for Mario for Fortnite who knows what. From 8 bits to gigabits, it has been a journey.

I really loved the development process in the 8-bit era when I was coding, making pixel art and sounds in Defender and Robotron. It was just two or three kids crazed in a game, and the management left us alone because they had no idea what we were doing! Somehow it was just magic. Even at Cruis’n USA, the game development team was only five people! But over the years it has increasingly become a giant Hollywood deal with great crews, lighting artists, animators, character riggers, texture people, sound developers, music composers, environmental artists, music designers. levels, character designers, art directors, tech leaders, programmers, special effects creators, game testers, and producers everywhere. And today’s games are incredible, 1000 times better than you could have dreamed of back in the day.

But just when you say that small teams and old school games are dead and that everything must have a budget of $ 100 million, out of nowhere comes a massive game like Flappy bird or Candy crush And it makes anyone with a budget over $ 10,000 look stupid! And the longer I’ve been in the gaming business, the more I realize that the only thing I’ve learned is that I don’t know anything! I probably spent half my career trying to get rid of the pixelated graphics, and get more realism, and then the next thing I know comes to a teenager in Sweden Minecraft, And giant pixels are now the coolest thing of all! I remember laughing at a talented young artist in the late 80s who wanted to make a game about growing plants (how are you going to blow that up?), And then 20 years later. Farm take the world by storm!

I think one of the big factors in the success of the Nintendo Switch is that it really captures the arcade style – the immediacy and accessible style of play that is really fun for everyone. So I think the old school arcade spirit is alive and well, not just in the physical arcades of the world, but within every Nintendo Switch player!

What was it like working with Nintendo again? Would Raw Thrills ever produce an exclusive game for consoles rather than arcades?

It has really been a pleasure working with Nintendo again. Obviously, a lot has changed in 25 years and the standards of play, content, localization and testing have grown exponentially. I remember the day I was working at Cruis’n USA and the tests were like, “Did the game crash? No? You’re good to go! “Now the complexity and quality of the game are through the roof and things are much more serious.

As for making a console-only release, who knows? We’ve been making great arcade games for the past 20 years at Raw Thrills, and now we’re one of the world’s leading arcade video game makers! We are having a lot of fun pushing the limits in the arcade with titles like Jurassic Park arcade, Halo: Raven Fireteam or our last original title King Kong from Skull Island VR. And guess what: the Cruis’n Blast arcade continues to be one of our best-selling products around the world.

Part of pushing the envelope is constantly exploring new things, and Cruis’n Blast for the Switch is a way to stretch out and see if we can bring something old / new to the console scene. I hope gamers get really excited about playing Cruis’n Blast for Switch. Nintendo is opening up a whole new universe for Raw Thrills. I can’t wait to see where we go from here!