10 years on Raw Thrills continues to produce exciting video product as Phil Clegg finds out

It is 10 years since Raw Thrills burst on to the scene with its innovative and exciting arcade games.

Midway Games was shutting down its video arcade development after many years of great success to focus on the consumer console game market. Three of its people, including veteran arcade game designer Eugene Jarvis, decided to set up Raw Thrills.

“We were a bunch of laid-off Midway arcade guys who were really excited about bringing arcade games into the 21st century with all the cool emerging graphics and interface technologies,” Jarvis told InterGame.

“So we were forced to start our own studio. It was kind of scary initially as the conventional wisdom was that arcade games were dead. I remember waking up in a cold sweat at night wondering what the hell we were getting into.”

Eugene Jarvis’ design credits include Defender, Robotron, NARC, Smash TV and the popular Cruis’n series of adventure driving games. Pretty soon Raw Thrills was bringing new life to the arcade scene with the release of Target:Terror, The Fast and the Furious, DRIFT and SuperBikes.

“The basic idea was to focus exclusively on arcade games, because as a small company you can only do a few things well,” said Jarvis. “In order to keep our focus, we partnered strategically with Betson, Namco Europe and other leading companies in the amusement industry to handle all our distribution, marketing and service.

“This has been the key to our success as we have first class partners in these crucial areas, allowing us to concentrate on game development and production. Our goal is to give the arcade players compelling entertainment, creating great cashbox but at the same time controlling costs, so an operator could make a good return on investment.”

The first games off the production line were The Fast and the Furious driving simulator and the Target:Terror shooter. “Fortunately, the games performed well. If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here! One trend we noticed in the arcade market was a rise in casual play, so we broadened the appeal of the games beyond the hard-core players. We also stepped up the graphics quality and frame rate, creating silky smooth game play and great player appeal.”

The company gradually expanded over the coming years, maintaining its self-funded philosophy. “We were trying to avoid the boom-bust management dysfunctions that had hurt the industry in the past,” said Jarvis. “We also wanted to keep our focus on just a few projects done well, as opposed to many games done with less care.”

Two major milestones followed - the release of the company’s third game, The Fast and the Furious SuperBikes, and the 2006 merger with Play Mechanix, a studio founded in 1995 by George Petro, a fellow developer from Midway. The legendary Play Mechanix design team are the creators of the famous Big Buck Hunter game series and Deal Or No Deal.

“They have an amazingly talented team of developers dedicated to video arcade games,” Jarvis told InterGame. “It was a great fit to join their software and artistic talents with our mechanical, hardware and production capabilities. And besides, their Big Buck Hunter game was a hell of a lot of fun to play!”

The merger has allowed the resultant entity to take on more projects while at the same time maintaining creative focus, since the studios are very independent and effectively do their own thing. “We feel it is very important for the studios to keep their own cultures and management structures,” said Jarvis. “That way we have a one plus one equals two business as opposed to one plus one equals nought, which is the result of many careless mergers.

“We have been able to provide the resources for Play Mechanix to really do the high quality games they have dreamed of over the years. Their latest release, Terminator:Salvation, is an amazing game that has become huge worldwide. We were able to make a $5m investment in research and development to support the title and the creative guys at Play Mechanix hit it out of the park.

“The game was built from the ground up, solely focused on the arcade market, which really makes a difference. Repurposed consumer titles just don’t have the play appeal, game pacing and novelty the arcade market demands.”

Over its first decade Raw Thrills introduced two or three new games each year. Current releases include Big Buck World, SuperBikes 2, The Fast and the Furious SuperCars, Terminator:Salvation, Wheel of Fortune and a great new monster truck driver/shooter, Dirty Drivin’.

Another thing the Raw Thrills directors are excited about is the ongoing partnership with ICE in video redemption. Play Mechanix collaborated with ICE on the mega hit Deal Or No Deal and later Deal Or No Deal Mega Deluxe and ICE recently released the Frogger redemption game in partnership with Raw Thrills and Konami.

“We are also having tremendous growth with our Asian partners UNIS and Wahlap,” added Jarvis. “I see all these partnerships expanding in the future. The Asian and emerging markets are very dynamic and a huge source of growth to the industry. It is great to see the enthusiasm of players in China and throughout Asia, the Middle East, Russia, Europe and Latin America.

“We are at the beginning of a revolutionary change in graphics technology with 3D and HD LCDs taking game play into entirely new directions. We are really going to surprise players with some great new concepts. Fun is a lot of hard work, but at the end of our first decade we’re still having a blast.”