There was a TV show called "Video Power," that was mostly about gameplay tips for Nintendo games, but there was a cartoon segment in the middle. The show was sponsored by Acclaim, so it was based on their games, "NARC" in particular.
Yep. I remember "Video Power" and the animated NARC segment. Always wanted to play somebody in Tecmo Bowl if I ever got on the show so I could spam Cap Boso and go to the obstacle course for all the cool prizes 😂
Probably the final boss was just a normal human being, but after busting some many drug cartels, you get inebriated by the drugs themselves and that is what you saw on drugs
crazy how he hardly even got hit the whole playthrough and then just chucked himself at the boss, dying repeatedly. Wonder if that's actually just the fastest way to do it...
I love that I correctly guessed the primary antagonist was named "Mr Big" just by his outfit and the fact that 75% of all mobsters were named Mr. Big in the 80's and 90's.
Not gonna lie, I would lose it if I found out someone actually went to the D.E.A. and applied saying, "Yeah, I got the high score on NARC. Sign me up."
Can you imagine the police report from this? "Suspect refused to comply with lawful commands, and began spitting out giant tongues, which then proceeded to aggressively bounce toward us."
And just their luck that their bodycam would run outta juice just as they encounter Mr. Big, maybe the only evidence hearing his obviously giant ominous hahahahaha before the footage cuts out. 🙂
Or the part where his head blows up and becomes a giant skull with a long segmented neck! And STILL continues to spit tongues! That especially is absurd.
To some extent. The Williams games seemed to have an overdone silliness since this point, definitely showing up in Smash TV and MK later (Oh, OK, Williams was bought by Midway and made this game.)
@@AL82RetrogamingLongplays , personally, I am pissed that no one had the fucking balls to fight the war on drugs like the people did in this game because had they done so, well, let me just say that drugs, druggies, drunks, pot heads, and other addicts would not exist and the world would be a lot better off without the assholes that ruined the lives of so many people.
This was so incredible when it came out. You have to appreciate Jarvis' games for making the *sound* so incredible. Smash TV was the natural succession to what worked here.
At 15:50, you gotta respect the absolute terror of that random criminal dude who, in the midst of flaming body parts, syringes, and bullets flying everywhere, manages to shout out "I give up!" in the hopes that that'll save him. Bless that boy.
Getting that far without going down, which is called a no miss run in arcade slang, is actually really impressive. You get extra lives or extends at every 100k points, and you are expected to need them.
I wonder if it’s related to how often you die? These games were designed to eat quarters so maybe since he wasn’t dying, the game wasn’t giving out ammo as often.
@@garvensman I did notice that bullet drops did increase as he started arresting people instead of just shooting. That may have something to do with it.
"DEA recruitment office...This is Sgt. Richardson" - DEA "Uhhh...Hi, I'm Jimmy and I'm 9 years old...I just beat the training mission on the Narc Arcade game and it told me to contact you." - Jimmy "Well done, kid. I take it you want to kill cracked out adult males, collect drugs, money and save hookers from pimps?" - Sgt. Richardson "Yeah, that sounds pretty awesome, sir...Do I get to keep any of it like in the game?" - Jimmy "No, son...but you can have sex with the STD infected hookers...After all, this IS the 80s. Why don't you come on down to the office and we'll get you set up?" - Sgt. Richardson
Yea, that bazooka blowing people up and body parts flying all over the place kinda freaks out little kids. In my arcade there was the Ninja Turtle game right next to it. Imagine a kid see what's happening the next game over. lol
"Hi is this the D.E.A.?" "....uh yes it is. Can I help you?" "I just beat N.A.R.C. an-" "Stay where you are, we're sending the helicopter to get you.....AGENT."
@@signorpaldoni High quality pixel art is unbeatable, but the style of this game is something I could only describe as "a glorious shitpost" and I'm so glad it exists
I never played this game as a kid, but I did see it played on the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and was very curious about it. It seems to be very hard even for an 80s standard arcade game.
@@jeffjackson9679 Wow, then that makes a whole world of sense. It also solidifies its stamp as an 80s standard game. Defender was one of the very first games I played as a little kid where I was learning to even write LOL.
@@EternalRoman Hated that control layout on the arcade version though, esp. for a game so hard to begin with. My hats off to anyone who could coordinate themselves to play that game.
@@jeffjackson9679 You mean in NARC? Cause I could still complain about DEFENDER though I still love it. I learned to play it well in the old Atari 2600 when I was a kid, then when I saw it on the arcade and tried my luck I had my butt handed over to me LOL. ROBOTRON was a game that I never got into, and when as a grown up I saw the controls a year ago I was glad I never got into it. I used to confuse it with BESERK and I had the same issue with PITTFALL and JUNGLE HUNT whom I used to get them mixed up smh.
'Congratulations! You have completed the NARC training mission!' Ok, I've been shot, stabbed, injected with God knows what, blown up, bitten, and attacked by a PCP fueled zombie and its only a TRAINING MISSION?
Where does Mr. Big get his hats? Does he commission a haberdasher to make him a size 1200 Fedora? Does he send his measurements to a prop manufacturing company?
First time I seen this game a pro happened to be playing and I got to see the whole thing to the end. Seeing the head thing at the end earned a serious "What the flying hell?!?". Very unique, loved it.
I was a small boy that stopped to watch somebody fight Mr. Big the last boss as a head and my mom watched with me as Mr. big’s head blew up. We were both disgusted and just walked away. Def made a impression!
I noticed at the end when the top players scrolled by there was one listed as 'JEH'. I'm wondering if this was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
That’s the first time I ever saw someone get to the end of The Bridge with the car intact. Great job! (I also didn’t know you can actually leave the car whenever you want.)
Despite the wackiness, this game was truly was amazing on the arcade- and that never translated to any port ever. Because they couldn't port the voices, which provided tons of context. They couldn't port the police radios. They couldn't port the bad ass music.
I loved dumping my quarters into this at a local theater when I was a kid. Seeing this video is giving me the urge to emulate. I wonder how it holds up.
PROTIP: level one, stay crouched the ENTIRE time and arrest as many people as you can. No one will hit you and you'll rack up a ton of extra lives for the rest of the game.
Millennials are too young to remember, but I recall like it was yesterday hearing on the news when Max Force and Hit Man took down the giant head on a hovering platform with flamethrowers for eyes and solved drugs in America forever. Of course, I was blasted out of my mind in the 80s, so I may be misremembering.
For all the monsters, demons, zombies, etc. that you see in horror games, nothing is quite as uncanny as the head of a mobster with three chins armed with tongues and a roomba. The fact that he looks like a clay model that was scanned into the game definitely helps with this.
I remember playing this at the arcade and wishing it was released on Amiga. Then many years later I was walking through an outdoor market and someone was selling it In a bargain basket!!!! Fun fact, at the first level. If you just stand there and keep shooting the enemies, these flies spawn in etc...
They show the skeletal phase of the final boss of this game in the TMNT movie at the footclan's hideout... I never knew that the game they were playing was NARC until watching this video.
"Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." John Ehrlichman, architect of the war on drgus policy, got to have a full political career his entire life
Mr. Big kind of resembles an evil, 'wish' version of Steve Harvey. "Survey says...shoot the dude in the wheelchair!" I seriously LOL'd when I saw it. And the way he crawled off looked hilariously perverted. Still laughing about it...
Narc Base command: "Mr. Big's Office is impenetrable" (Players breaches it in mere minutes) Player: Misses half the plants during "Harvest Time" even after all enemies are gone Also Player: Makes sure to grab EVERY gold bar in "Jackpot"
That's because about half of them are rigged to explode on contact. A TAS would be able to just avoid the booby-trapped weed, but a player is expected to guess. Just another of those mechanics to have the game munch your money. No point in putting explosives on the currency after you defeat the kingpin of the whole organization. The only being expected to touch those gold bars was Mr Big himself, and you just finished killing him to get to that room.
I had the LCD version of this game. It was wretched-as nearly all LCD games tend to be-and I promptly smashed it with a sharp rock after I finally beat it.
While looking up technical information about this game I learned about the Texas Instruments TMS34010. The Williams games starting with NARC and continuing all the way through the Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam era were all using this chip, which is both a 32-bit CPU and a programmable DSP - that's why the graphics are particularly advanced for 1988. It could be described as a form of early GPU. TI attempted to sell the chip to console makers and as a PC hardware add-on; the latter did result in some products, but the industry moved towards the VESA SVGA standard instead. In an alternate universe where it had wider adoption it could have become a defacto standard for gaming graphics like their previous TMS9918.
love the sub-level where you get points for picking up cannabis plants, and a ganja bonus at the end! Wonder if it foresaw that cannabis would be somewhat legal in many places, thirty plus years later
I loved this game so much. Eventually got to where I could beat it on a single quarter. You gotta bust all those dudes for max points, but kill the freaks like the clowns and PCP heads.
You know the funny thing is, all the video game violence people raised such a fuss about Mortal Kombat and DOOM, while this came out the previous decade, and they said nothing, I guess violence, death, and gore are fine when it's being directed against drug dealers.
I find it strange that this had quite a bit of gore and sexual references but it's only after Mortal Kombat that parents decided to do something about it. xD
A stupidly expensive game to produce; it used a TMS34010 CPU and two 6809s and a boatload of expensive EPROMs. Not to mention holdover technologies from other Williams games like the HC55516 CVSD decoder.
Midway or Warner Bros that owns them, seriously needs to make a new Midway arcade collection. I'm surprised they never thought of doing so again. Only the xbox one has the 360/PS3 version which lacks some of the other Midway games that were on Midway arcade treasures 2 and 3. Cause I would love to play Narc again. It was nuts with how over the top it was presented. lol
If you could beat this game on less than a buck, you were pretty darn good. It was of course much easier if you had two players playing. Played this alot with a friend in the arcade when we were like 11 or 12 years old and tge game was new. We got good at it and could beat it on a buck between the two of us. "SEE" and "ROB" held the all time high scores on this machine at our arcade i believe until its demise.
Holy shit, >720p resolution in 1988. It’s surreal seeing the original arcade versions of games and finding out that a random few were relatively high definition. Imagine if the evolution of games took a different turn and during the 7th generation of gaming, there was a flood of games with HD resolution but they all used digitized photos of people lol
![Splatterhouse Longplay (Arcade) [60 FPS]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HB6Iebq5LkY/mqdefault.jpg)
![Splatterhouse Longplay (Arcade) [60 FPS]](/img/tr.png)
![Terminator 2: Judgement Day Longplay (Arcade) [4K]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vLh_DitivaU/mqdefault.jpg)
![[TAS] Mach Breakers: Numan Athletics 2 (1 player)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4BPC48GxgJE/mqdefault.jpg)
There was a TV show called "Video Power," that was mostly about gameplay tips for Nintendo games, but there was a cartoon segment in the middle. The show was sponsored by Acclaim, so it was based on their games, "NARC" in particular.
Yep. I remember "Video Power" and the animated NARC segment. Always wanted to play somebody in Tecmo Bowl if I ever got on the show so I could spam Cap Boso and go to the obstacle course for all the cool prizes 😂
FUN FACT: This was the very first arcade game to feature the now-iconic "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screen.
Few of us listened.
It was also the first to show blood.
“Winners don’t use Trump”
@@mmodnao You Mean
"Winners Don't Vote For Trump"
Bill S. Sessions or something like that? I saw that golf medallion and message so many times..
This is a surprisingly realistic portrayal of American law enforcement's response to the drug problem.
It’s amazing because they still lost the war on drugs 🫠
Because it was a war against minorities, which doesn’t work, ever.
@Deepdarkbasement well yea. You saw how insane that final boss is? No way could they win against that.
@@Lightblue2222
Exactly!
@@Deepdarkbasementhard to win when the CIA and DEA are the biggest perpetrators.
"Cocaine is really popular with... the same guy."
That final boss is some grade A nightmare fuel.
Probably the final boss was just a normal human being, but after busting some many drug cartels, you get inebriated by the drugs themselves and that is what you saw on drugs
It's kinda like that Smash TV boss.
crazy how he hardly even got hit the whole playthrough and then just chucked himself at the boss, dying repeatedly. Wonder if that's actually just the fastest way to do it...
@@johns783 Probably yes since the boss design was just bullshit and the final obstacle to really eat away all your money.
@@NisseDood fair assessment.
I love that I correctly guessed the primary antagonist was named "Mr Big" just by his outfit and the fact that 75% of all mobsters were named Mr. Big in the 80's and 90's.
Mr. Big Shot.
they were pretty Notorious
The main villain in Guardians of the hood is also named Mr. Big. Aaaanddd, at the end of the game it is revealed that she’s a woman!
The pilot episode of the sitcom classic "Get Smart" had a Mr. Big... who was a very short man.
From 1965.
@@ncantThey pulled a Samus😂😂
"I guess Lou Bega had some hard time getting work after Mambo No. 5" - JonTron, 2014
"wow, cocaine is really popular with ... the same guy"
@@Anarcho_Ingsoc”I GIVE UP!”
Too little, too late, talking leg.
Holy crap, I didn’t realize this joke is 10 years old! 👴🏽
"He's got a picture of himself labeled me"
I love that video!
This was an amazing documentary. I remember when this happened in the late 80s.
Well its not everyday you hear about drug dealing clowns
@@rockk9753 you really think you can raise a family on clown work? grow up, kid; ALL clowns sell drugs.
@@LIONTAMER3D I guess laughter doesnt make the world go round after all
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😭😭😭
I got aids reading this comment train. Well played!
Not gonna lie, I would lose it if I found out someone actually went to the D.E.A. and applied saying, "Yeah, I got the high score on NARC. Sign me up."
I pray someone had (or still does) a job at the D.E.A in part because of this weird rad game lmao
Pretty sure this is what Nixon envisioned when he declared a war on drugs.
Can you imagine the police report from this?
"Suspect refused to comply with lawful commands, and began spitting out giant tongues, which then proceeded to aggressively bounce toward us."
That would quiet a frantic event. Exciting and ridiculous.
And just their luck that their bodycam would run outta juice just as they encounter Mr. Big, maybe the only evidence hearing his obviously giant ominous hahahahaha before the footage cuts out. 🙂
Or the part where his head blows up and becomes a giant skull with a long segmented neck! And STILL continues to spit tongues! That especially is absurd.
What police report? The cop character is literally out there murdering everything that moves lmao
@@pablot-r9402 body cam analog horror
That last boss is so weird. That would’ve given me nightmares as a kid if I played this
I did have nightmares about this game, I played it when I was 8-9 years old.
"You have completed the NARC training mission... Contact your local DEA recruiter." Um, OK, um...
Really pieced it together.
"Hello is this the D.E.A.? This is Jimmy. I just beat Mr. Big."
D.E.A. "SAY NO MORE."
@@slayerd357 YOU ARE ON YOUR WAY TO THE FLETC, PILGRIM. GET YOUR ARMOR & SUIT UP TIME TO BLAST SOME DRUG DEALERS AWAY. YEEEEEEE-HAAAAAA
“Oh wait you’re serious, let me laugh even harder”
It's weird, this game looks like a satire on America's war on drugs.
Yet, at some point, I know this game was supposed to be taken seriously.
If there was ever a game that needed the "Winners Don't Use Drugs" splash screen from William Sessions, Director of the FBI, it was this one!
To some extent. The Williams games seemed to have an overdone silliness since this point, definitely showing up in Smash TV and MK later (Oh, OK, Williams was bought by Midway and made this game.)
@@AL82RetrogamingLongplays This whole game WAS the splash screen
I remember playing it as a little kid and even then I thought it was a bit much.
@@AL82RetrogamingLongplays , personally, I am pissed that no one had the fucking balls to fight the war on drugs like the people did in this game because had they done so, well, let me just say that drugs, druggies, drunks, pot heads, and other addicts would not exist and the world would be a lot better off without the assholes that ruined the lives of so many people.
As soon as the final boss changed forms I realized I was finally seeing that game those kids were playing in the first Ninja Turtles movie, holy cow.
One of the most bonkers arcade games that Midway ever made.
I like the arcade version more than the PS2 3D remake. The PS2 one doesn't have the Judge Dredd spirit of the original.
Not bad graphics for a game made in 1988.
You can tell it was a labour of love
huge statement lol midway made some cracked-out games =/
@@LIONTAMER3D Smash TV, Total Carnage, Mortal Kombat, Revolution X, Carnevil.
This was so incredible when it came out. You have to appreciate Jarvis' games for making the *sound* so incredible. Smash TV was the natural succession to what worked here.
Didnt he design pinball games for williams too
At 15:50, you gotta respect the absolute terror of that random criminal dude who, in the midst of flaming body parts, syringes, and bullets flying everywhere, manages to shout out "I give up!" in the hopes that that'll save him. Bless that boy.
Too late talking leg.
I like how at 16:57 the NARC finally gives in and actually does drugs.
Getting that far without going down, which is called a no miss run in arcade slang, is actually really impressive. You get extra lives or extends at every 100k points, and you are expected to need them.
It's kind of amazing how few bullet pick-ups there are in a game so clearly dedicated to gunplay.
I wonder if it’s related to how often you die? These games were designed to eat quarters so maybe since he wasn’t dying, the game wasn’t giving out ammo as often.
@@garvensman I did notice that bullet drops did increase as he started arresting people instead of just shooting. That may have something to do with it.
@@vsgfilmgroup Makes sense
Also, you never run out of ammo for some reason.
@@pantheman2842 Not completely. My guess is that you go to that other weapon he's carrying when you run out, which is a single-shot.
This was always the loudest cabinet in an arcade!! 🎶 takes me back!!
the chopper sound efx were super-loud
Just walk into the arcade
*YOU’RE BUSTED!*
Midway knew how to market arcade games to people, mainly kids.
"DEA recruitment office...This is Sgt. Richardson" - DEA
"Uhhh...Hi, I'm Jimmy and I'm 9 years old...I just beat the training mission on the Narc Arcade game and it told me to contact you." - Jimmy
"Well done, kid. I take it you want to kill cracked out adult males, collect drugs, money and save hookers from pimps?" - Sgt. Richardson
"Yeah, that sounds pretty awesome, sir...Do I get to keep any of it like in the game?" - Jimmy
"No, son...but you can have sex with the STD infected hookers...After all, this IS the 80s. Why don't you come on down to the office and we'll get you set up?" - Sgt. Richardson
Best comment I've seen in a long time! As an 80's kid I can relate to this energy.
The Last Starfighter, but NARC instead. The DEA turning little Jimmy loose to solo Compton in 1989.
"people can die in this game... But not dogs."
"Ok they won't die they'll turn into puppies."
"Young man, you're promoted!"
This was one of only a few games that actually freaked me out as a kid when I saw it in an arcade.
Yea, that bazooka blowing people up and body parts flying all over the place kinda freaks out little kids. In my arcade there was the Ninja Turtle game right next to it. Imagine a kid see what's happening the next game over. lol
@@JohnSmith-nj4zq The grainy, pseudo-realistic graphics fall pretty hard into the uncanny valley. And then there's the final boss...
Always loved that 80's swagger walk the main character had 😂
This is what I feel like Cartman saw in his mind during the Hall Monitor episode.
"Hi is this the D.E.A.?"
"....uh yes it is. Can I help you?"
"I just beat N.A.R.C. an-"
"Stay where you are, we're sending the helicopter to get you.....AGENT."
I just love that the first "Winners Don't Use Drugs" game was a violent shooting game.
This is why drugs won the War on Drugs.
Government corruption is bullet proof.
"This would've put a tear on Ronnie Reagan's eye"
Behold the first 32-bit arcade game...an American documentary.
I remember been so impressed of those graphics we can't possibility get any better than this.
It still looks kickass
And we didn't
I hated those graphics, just like I hated MK Pit Fighter and many others like that. Felt fake and unrefined to me, I preferred classic pixel art.
Me too. I loved digitized graphics when they were used.
@@signorpaldoni High quality pixel art is unbeatable, but the style of this game is something I could only describe as "a glorious shitpost" and I'm so glad it exists
I never played this game as a kid, but I did see it played on the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and was very curious about it. It seems to be very hard even for an 80s standard arcade game.
@@swampfoxIX It does show to be one of the 80s staple arcades, or at least one of the mayor ones with such graphics from the late 80s.
Eugene Jarvis made it, and he was known for making some great, but very hard arcade games back in the day (Defender, Stargate, Robotron etc.)
@@jeffjackson9679 Wow, then that makes a whole world of sense. It also solidifies its stamp as an 80s standard game. Defender was one of the very first games I played as a little kid where I was learning to even write LOL.
@@EternalRoman Hated that control layout on the arcade version though, esp. for a game so hard to begin with. My hats off to anyone who could coordinate themselves to play that game.
@@jeffjackson9679 You mean in NARC? Cause I could still complain about DEFENDER though I still love it. I learned to play it well in the old Atari 2600 when I was a kid, then when I saw it on the arcade and tried my luck I had my butt handed over to me LOL. ROBOTRON was a game that I never got into, and when as a grown up I saw the controls a year ago I was glad I never got into it. I used to confuse it with BESERK and I had the same issue with PITTFALL and JUNGLE HUNT whom I used to get them mixed up smh.
From the makers of Mortal Kombat. This game was hilarious.
pure crack rocks is what it is
@@LIONTAMER3D dont you mean k.r.a.k.?
@@rockk9753 i mean nuke =/
the ending music is a YTPMV before it was even a thing. Midway was truly ahead of the times
'Congratulations! You have completed the NARC training mission!'
Ok, I've been shot, stabbed, injected with God knows what, blown up, bitten, and attacked by a PCP fueled zombie and its only a TRAINING MISSION?
Where does Mr. Big get his hats?
Does he commission a haberdasher to make him a size 1200 Fedora?
Does he send his measurements to a prop manufacturing company?
First time I seen this game a pro happened to be playing and I got to see the whole thing to the end. Seeing the head thing at the end earned a serious "What the flying hell?!?". Very unique, loved it.
I was a small boy that stopped to watch somebody fight Mr. Big the last boss as a head and my mom watched with me as Mr. big’s head blew up. We were both disgusted and just walked away. Def made a impression!
I noticed at the end when the top players scrolled by there was one listed as 'JEH'. I'm wondering if this was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
this is hands down the most accurate representation of America ever produced.
Not really. The streets in this game are cleaner than real life LA. And no homeless tents...
We used to be a proper country!
That’s the first time I ever saw someone get to the end of The Bridge with the car intact. Great job! (I also didn’t know you can actually leave the car whenever you want.)
Actually this is the stage where you can rack up your points. Anything else makes the game boring especially with little to no busts
Kinky Pinky was how we got Sweet-Tooth and Dr. Roxxo.
"Like Skyrim with guns" 11/10
-IGN (2014)
"Metal Slug, but you shoot meth addicts" 19.8/20
-Gamespot (2001)
Can I just point out... he jumps from a moving helicopter and lands on his feet....... everything else in this game I can believe :D
He got them Air Jordan's. Of course he can jump off a moving helicopter.
@nemo pouncey lol
this whole game is unbelievable. it's so wild how this was supposed to be taken seriously as a campaign to stay away from drugs
Maybe he’s part cat?
I loved playing this game on the original Xbox, especially when you get to face Mr. Big in his final form.
*_"You die, cop!! HAA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAA!!"_*
Despite the wackiness, this game was truly was amazing on the arcade- and that never translated to any port ever. Because they couldn't port the voices, which provided tons of context. They couldn't port the police radios. They couldn't port the bad ass music.
Might be some of the best gore on the NES though
@@HideAndRead it was a pretty amazing nes game actually.
Now why can't we get it on systems today? 😢
Oddly enough I remember playing this, or something very simialr to it on Atari 1040 when I was a kid
I played the hell out of this on NES and I gotta say the NES soundtrack is way better.
I loved dumping my quarters into this at a local theater when I was a kid. Seeing this video is giving me the urge to emulate. I wonder how it holds up.
I'd like to know how many kids called the DEA recruiters after finishing this.
i mean, there had to be at LEAST one, right?
The kids that wanted to stop drug smuggling clowns haha
Truly masterpiece of arcade games 👾 🕹
ъъ\psychedelic flamenco \horror 🎸🎸🎸=
th-cam.com/video/bjXai-7URvU/w-d-xo.html
Looks more like a flash game to me.
(Rip flash)
PROTIP: level one, stay crouched the ENTIRE time and arrest as many people as you can. No one will hit you and you'll rack up a ton of extra lives for the rest of the game.
Millennials are too young to remember, but I recall like it was yesterday hearing on the news when Max Force and Hit Man took down the giant head on a hovering platform with flamethrowers for eyes and solved drugs in America forever.
Of course, I was blasted out of my mind in the 80s, so I may be misremembering.
There should be a secret "I can't breathe" move.
The cop's walk cycle is oddly sassy
For all the monsters, demons, zombies, etc. that you see in horror games, nothing is quite as uncanny as the head of a mobster with three chins armed with tongues and a roomba. The fact that he looks like a clay model that was scanned into the game definitely helps with this.
Can we take a moment to appreciate that these devs had enough sprites to animate a baggie of drugs falling to the ground with a plap
I would play this at the mall when every mall had at least one bad ass arcade, I miss the 80s,and 90s
This game was so fun back in the day..
The dogs getting shrunk and then running away is kinda adorable.
I love how the whole point of this game was to be against drug use, but I'm pretty sure drugs were involved in the design of the final boss.
DEA agent: "So what makes you think this is the career for you?"
80s kid: Opens his trunk to reveal a bunch of swiss cheesed gang bangers.
Who knew Steve Harvey would be the final boss for NARC
I remember playing this at the arcade and wishing it was released on Amiga. Then many years later I was walking through an outdoor market and someone was selling it In a bargain basket!!!!
Fun fact, at the first level. If you just stand there and keep shooting the enemies, these flies spawn in etc...
The final boss looks familiar. He reminds me of that one claymation video on TH-cam
I use to love playing this at 7/11 when I was living in Vancouver as a kid back in 1987.
They show the skeletal phase of the final boss of this game in the TMNT movie at the footclan's hideout... I never knew that the game they were playing was NARC until watching this video.
It showed the game name in the movie. Right on the arcade cabinet. Rewatch it man.
"Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
John Ehrlichman, architect of the war on drgus policy, got to have a full political career his entire life
Mr. Big kind of resembles an evil, 'wish' version of Steve Harvey. "Survey says...shoot the dude in the wheelchair!" I seriously LOL'd when I saw it. And the way he crawled off looked hilariously perverted. Still laughing about it...
Narc Base command: "Mr. Big's Office is impenetrable"
(Players breaches it in mere minutes)
Player: Misses half the plants during "Harvest Time" even after all enemies are gone
Also Player: Makes sure to grab EVERY gold bar in "Jackpot"
That's because about half of them are rigged to explode on contact. A TAS would be able to just avoid the booby-trapped weed, but a player is expected to guess. Just another of those mechanics to have the game munch your money.
No point in putting explosives on the currency after you defeat the kingpin of the whole organization. The only being expected to touch those gold bars was Mr Big himself, and you just finished killing him to get to that room.
I had the LCD version of this game. It was wretched-as nearly all LCD games tend to be-and I promptly smashed it with a sharp rock after I finally beat it.
More like LSD version amirite?
Wow, I haven't played this in ages. I forgot how Mr. Big looks like Lou Bega on crack. I can just hear an off-key demonic voice singing Mambo #5. :P
🤣🤣
Mr Big's biggest achievement was making a hat that fits.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the 1990 movie) brought me here because I saw the final battle with Mr. Big's skeleton in the film! :D
While looking up technical information about this game I learned about the Texas Instruments TMS34010. The Williams games starting with NARC and continuing all the way through the Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam era were all using this chip, which is both a 32-bit CPU and a programmable DSP - that's why the graphics are particularly advanced for 1988. It could be described as a form of early GPU. TI attempted to sell the chip to console makers and as a PC hardware add-on; the latter did result in some products, but the industry moved towards the VESA SVGA standard instead.
In an alternate universe where it had wider adoption it could have become a defacto standard for gaming graphics like their previous TMS9918.
love the sub-level where you get points for picking up cannabis plants, and a ganja bonus at the end! Wonder if it foresaw that cannabis would be somewhat legal in many places, thirty plus years later
Did Dog the Bounty Hunter base his look off Dr. Spike or something?!
This game is so violent oh my god. I like how this is the brutal response that the narcs use to stop drugs, just violate the laws of man.
Mr. Big also known as a Primus music video asset.
I loved this game so much. Eventually got to where I could beat it on a single quarter. You gotta bust all those dudes for max points, but kill the freaks like the clowns and PCP heads.
That walk animation tell you all you need to know.
Anyone else remember Max Force (the blue N.A.R.C.) was one of the characters on the power team cartoon show?
I don't know why, but this heavily reminds me of Monty Pyton going arcade.
You know the funny thing is, all the video game violence people raised such a fuss about Mortal Kombat and DOOM, while this came out the previous decade, and they said nothing, I guess violence, death, and gore are fine when it's being directed against drug dealers.
Sounds right to me.
I first played this on Midway Arcade Treasures 2 on the GameCube back in 2006. Memories.
I find it strange that this had quite a bit of gore and sexual references but it's only after Mortal Kombat that parents decided to do something about it. xD
I find it slightly heartening that the dogs just turn into puppies and run away when they're shot.
Yep... You can murder surrendered winos with an incindiary rocket to the back , but no dogs were harmed on this mission!
Mr. Big is Skibi Toilet's ancestor!
Man i LOVED this game as a kid. I had an arcade collection with this on it and it was the only game i played 90% of the time!
License plate: Say No, Or Die
That about sums up Reagan’s 80s…
Ah yes, one of the many Arcades that the Shredder had in his hideout, nice.
A stupidly expensive game to produce; it used a TMS34010 CPU and two 6809s and a boatload of expensive EPROMs. Not to mention holdover technologies from other Williams games like the HC55516 CVSD decoder.
At least in '88 the depiction of arresting procedures are very accurate ('bam bam bam' freeze)
Yeah, I noticed plenty of times when the dealers said, "I give up!" only to be shot in the back a second later.
Really love the final boss. Terrifying biomechanical thing.
It’s just as good as JonTron said!
“NOT…EVEN…ONCE!”
Jeez that final boss is jacked! Imagine wasting all the quarters in your pocket trying to kill him with all that touch damage
Midway or Warner Bros that owns them, seriously needs to make a new Midway arcade collection.
I'm surprised they never thought of doing so again. Only the xbox one has the 360/PS3 version which lacks some of the other Midway games that were on Midway arcade treasures 2 and 3. Cause I would love to play Narc again. It was nuts with how over the top it was presented. lol
If you could beat this game on less than a buck, you were pretty darn good. It was of course much easier if you had two players playing. Played this alot with a friend in the arcade when we were like 11 or 12 years old and tge game was new. We got good at it and could beat it on a buck between the two of us. "SEE" and "ROB" held the all time high scores on this machine at our arcade i believe until its demise.
They really nailed the future with this one. It was like a prediction.
I had this for NES. You still love playing this especially two players with a friend.
Holy shit, >720p resolution in 1988. It’s surreal seeing the original arcade versions of games and finding out that a random few were relatively high definition. Imagine if the evolution of games took a different turn and during the 7th generation of gaming, there was a flood of games with HD resolution but they all used digitized photos of people lol
Mr. Big was a prototype Tromaville Mutie boss for Smash TV and Total Carnage, wasn't he?
"Too little too late, talking leg."