Quarters Only! Arcade Throwback Thread--Dig it, Matcho Man!

[AcidDragon]

Haha Xenophobe. I literally just played this on my NES today.

[packerbacker180]

Nice.

[BrandonDaCollector]

Cool Acid
Gosh, good one PB This title wouldn't stand today's parhelic standards, I mean everything is racist
Anyway, I actually do not recall this game at all. As you know I'm a huge Alien, Star wars & Star Trek fan so I don't know how I missed it Cool entry PB

By the way, this just triggered My mind, I played a couple great Aliens & Terminator arcade games several years ago at the show so I think I'll do them next HERE

[packerbacker180]

I've never been shy about my love of the 80s' I was two when they began, which I always felt was the perfect age because I grew up alongside video games. I was a tad too young for the Pong and Pac-man days at the arcade, though old enough for when the Atari 2600 really hit homes and could play them there. And by the time I was going in to my second decade on this Earth, video games were beginning to mature as well. No, I ain't talking about Leisure Suit Larry "mature".




No, I'm talking more about fire a bazooka and blow up some criminals so that their limbs fly all across the screen. Yes, I'm talking about Narc.



Narc was the first game created for the reformed former pinball machine mogul Williams Electronics which had been acquired by arcade giant, Midway. Narc was one of, if not the first, "ultra-violent games" that would look tame just a few years later when you could rip out spines and dance the jig on them. Video killed the radio star and by the late 80's the video game generation was getting older and a Puckman eating pellets was a little too tame. Enter Max Force and Hit Man...



Narc was the 80s war on drugs made into a video game that was a...war on drugs. In Narc you could choose from two members of Project NARC and go out on missions busting members of KRAK or killing drug dealers and junkies as you blasted your way through city streets, bridges, drug mills, etc. while taking on serial killer clowns like Kinky Pinky the clown doll from Poltergeist brought to human form, drug enforcers like Joe Rockhead who was better known as "Dumpster Man" because he, well, threw dumpsters at people, dogs you'd shoot and they'd turn in to little puppies and run away because blowing up junkies was kosher, but shooting dogs was a bridge too far, Travis.



You could do all this as you fought your way through an army of...Paul Shaffers?



I always thought he was a little too full of "energy" all the time.



Actually, that's the Das Lof Gang, the lowest level of blowupable baddies in the game who, oddly enough, weren't from the pornography wing of KRAK (they always looked like flashers to me, Paul), no, that wing was run by Kinky Pinky the homicidal hanky-panky harlequin himself (mmmmm, that's some tasty alliteration....).



Anyway, Narc used a medium resolution monitor and a 32-bit processor which is why everything seemed a little more detailed than games of the same era. It was the same type of graphics style which would later be used in games like SMASH TV and Mortal Kombat, supposedly, because all of that and Telly Savalas are Greek to me.



But here, you were armed with a machine gun that fired not quite bullets but not quite GI Joe lasers either, and a rocket launcher. When you shot a junkie there was a splash of blood before they dissolved into the ground ala Rolling Thunder. Of course, you could also "bust" the perps by standing next to them and getting them to surrender, but where's the fun in that when you could send their limbs flying in all directions as the corpse sunk into the ground as a charred husk. Then you could pickup the money and the bags. Of course, if their limbs are everywhere how is that a body flaming there? Shut up, Johnny Storm, and spam the shooting button!



If you got far enough to reach KRAK headquarters you'd come across Mr. Big himself the fat necked wealthy leader of Mr. Big International, and not to be confused with Carrie Bradshaw's occasional significant other.



Despite first facing him and defeating a wheelchair bound Mr. Big, he would make his escape and return in a much more headstrong form. Mr. Big, the head of KRAK in Narc however, quite literally turned out to be a big head...that would of course fire...tongues at you? (I can't believe that's an actual sentence). KRAK is whack, gang.



Somehow that managed to not even be the grossest new tongue action of 1988...



Narc was a fun and fitting farewell to my childhood in the 80s as by the 90s people wanted more gore (just not Al Gore), an amalgamation of Nacy Reagan's Say No to Drugs campaign tossed into a blender with MTV and Rambo III brought to you in exploding electronic glory. Narc proved to be popular enough despite the often repetitive onslaught of identical Shaffers and the like (nothing new to games but the sheer number here often was overwhelming visually), and eventually it would bleed in to home entertainment systems in 1990 because until then, as they said, no one had the guts, allegedly...



Because GUTS, of course, didn't debut until 1992!



And OMG I never realized the host of GUTS was Mike O'Malley, the same Mike O'Mally who played Jimmy on Yes, Dear and Charlie Gully on Heels. Where the hell does time go?



Of course, I've sadly got some grey in my beard as well.



Thanks, Keith Hernandez.



Max Force and Mr. Big would go on to star in the short-lived The Power Team cartoon, which aired as a 15 minute segment in the Video Power show, neither of which I had ever heard of until recently. Max Force was toned down and Mr. Big for some reason, had shaved his sinister stache for the toon, probably to avoid being recognized judging by this terrible theme...



While I remember some people being offended by the violence of the game back in the day, I think now looking back it's pretty tamed in comparison to what's come since, and it's attempted anti-drug message (though mostly lost in the violence, I think) was a decent message. Heck, if you defeated the game you saw a screen encouraging you to go to the nearest DEA Recruitment Center, who knows if Pablo Escobar might still be on the loose today if this game had never been created.



It is a shame they went with the name Max Force we were so close to getting Max Power in video game form.

[BrandonDaCollector]

Holy crap, NARC You know I just talked about it recently in My NES collection and I said I wanted to showcase it...well you beat Me too it and it's ok dude and I must say you did a good job here PB Who knos, I might just do a take of My own

I loved this game, I never got the chance to play it on the actual arcade itself but just the NES. I loved the action movies of the 80s & 90s and stuff like that during them times. I remember playing the game on My NES before I'd go to school and when I'd come home I'd wanna play it again many, many times. Saw the ads in WWF mags & WWF TV, such great times. I missed those days a lot and when the "just say no" was going on too Pathetic how it is now, is this even the same place we're on anymore

Oh you know how much I loved Acclaim, they went in great partnerships with Midway/Williams whom I also enjoyed which Ocean was good too

Like I said before in the console topic and My original one, this is one of the many games that needs to be re-released or remastered in proper treatment for today's consoles. It has only been on the Midway Treasures for Xbox long ago and the fools didn't make it backwards compatible, that POed Me so greatly There is so much that needs its and they are wasting nothing but time by delaying it day after day

So here is sort of a treat to behold since you covered just about everything else PB I always pay attention to the little details, what's in the background, who's in the crowd, stuff that many don't care about but by doing that they could miss a lot or something really crucial. When I first saw the original TMNT movie way back in 1990, I was excited to see that Narc was in the cool arcade scene, here is a pic I took...

and here is the scene...check it out



Great one PB

[packerbacker180]

Neat. I don't think I've actually watched TMNT movie since I saw it in the theatre. I'm sure I would've noticed that but can't say I remember it. I do remember playing Narc on the NES. Not sure if I owned it, rented it, or borrowed it. It was a pretty decent, if not slightly toned down, version.

[AcidDragon]

Ha, my last birthday was TMNT themed and I ended up watching the first and second TMNT movies. I totally pointed out the NARC machine that popped up during that scene.

[packerbacker180]

The only thing I remember about the second TMNT movie is that it killed what little coolness Vanilla Ice had left, lol. But I'll karaoke Ice, Ice Baby til the day I die.

[AcidDragon]

Ha, I once held the Diamond Trophy for Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby on XBox's karaoke game at one point which meant I had the highest score in the world. LOL. I've obviously since been squashed but it was fun while it lasted.

I saw him perform Ninja Rap live at a CFL football game. LOL.

[packerbacker180]

Not sure which is worse, admitting you saw Vanilla Ice live or that you saw a CFL game live...