Ultimate Guide: NARC
The city’s overrun! Slashers! Gangsters! Pimps! The punks and scum of the Earth are everywhere! Only you can restore law and order. Trigger finger at the ready, it’s time to clean up the streets… say hello to my little friend, punk!
After reading this, you’ll be cleaning the streets in this arcade classic faster than a hybrid of Shaft and Robocop.
Chances are you’ve never played a game like Narc. Violent, seedy and over-thetop, it’s a right-wing Eighties action movie merged with an overcooked anti-drug message, and was rumoured to be the favourite videogame of that well-known gamer, and former US first lady, Nancy Reagan. Pre-empting parent-baiting titles such as Grand Theft Auto by at least ten years, Narc was designed by Eugene Jarvis with coding by George Petro and released in arcades in 1988. Following Williams Electronics’ acquisition by Midway Games, it was touted as the company’s comeback.
And it’s ludicrous. So absolutely, pantswettingly stupid, that it’s impossible to imagine its designer and coder not guffawing at themselves with every overblown piece of gameplay or plot they added. Let’s start with the main playable characters, two rogue cops by the name of Max Force and Hit Man. Dressed in colourful combat armour (blue and red), they also boast motorcycle helmets and have a distinctive lack of subtlety. These futuristic police officers must infiltrate the world of Mr Big, king of the criminal underworld in a miserable and destitute city. In their way stand hordes of pimps, gangsters, junkies and psychotic madmen, all intent on taking our heroes down as messily as possible. These crooks must be pacified by whatever means, a delightful euphemism for the slaughter that pervades every corner of Narc.
Each level scrolls horizontally from left to right with the display a semi-3d effect as the characters move in and out of the scenery, and contains doors from which enemies emerge, or are used to exit to the next area. To use this, the player must find a coloured key card, usually left strewn on the floor or held by an enemy goon. As with most
arcade games, it begins slowly, before a swarm of criminals descend upon the narcs. The default weapon is a automatic machine pistol, which holds a limited amount of ammunition. Rockets can also be picked up which can be used to terminate with extreme prejudice, although bystanders must be avoided. It’s not all gunplay, however; Max Force and Hit Man are policemen, and can apprehend enemies by simply walking up to them and using one of an infinite supply of handcuffs.
Dropped evidence (usually a drugs stash or money) can then be collected, although this approach is as predictably hazardous as you might expect, given that the stooges of Mr Big are armed with guns, syringes or worse. Shooting them is much safer, and satisfying, despite the point bonus that arrests can yield.
Starting out in an abandoned junkyard, the player is soon assaulted by numerous (and identical) trench-coated junkies. After a brief gang takedown in a dank subway, it’s off to a secret laboratory where addict scientist Dr Spike Rush, AKA Hypoman, is busy manufacturing drugs for sale on the street. Here the game’s violence takes an odd turn. Attacked by vicious rottweilers, the cops must retaliate or be chewed to death. Yet peculiarly, unlike their human owners who slink into the ground upon death, these hounds mutate back into puppies when shot, and scurry off, presumably to reconsider their life options. Further sojourns across a bridge and a verdant nursery lead the player to Mr Big’s offices, and the home of his organisation, Krak. Battle your way past hordes of boardroom gangsters and there’s a face-off with Mr Big himself, no longer the wheelchair-bound crime lord. In a glorious, ridiculous, and entirely unexpected conclusion, Mr Big is transformed into a grinning and swollen head, shooting missiles at our heroes. Hit him with enough rockets and he transforms again, into a steel skull, complete with elongated spine and spitting what appears to be lumps of flesh at the cops.
And then there’s the car. Eschewing a boring squad car or unmarked sedan, this pair of detectives drive an understated bright red Porsche, complete with rockets, front-mounted machine guns and an on-board computer that reveals details of each arch-criminal awaiting them. Appearing on the lengthy bridge section, it can be driven at breakneck speeds with a complete disregard for human life, let alone traffic regulations. Alas, such careless driving often results in the explosive destruction of the notoriously fragile vehicle, complete with a comedic bouncing wheel. Each narc begins the game with three lives, and an energy bar for each one, which is sapped with disarming ease by the miscreants of the city.
Upon release in arcades, Narc caused a furore among parents who naturally objected to their children being exposed to such a bloodythirsty approach to law enforcement, while the seedy tone of the game appeared to escape censure. Given the parade of dismembered bloody
limbs every time the player uses the rocket launcher, this is perhaps unsurprising. The game’s angular upright cabinet is slightly unusual in that the controls are housed separately and below the monitor, which sits within its own rectangular unit above the main machine. A brace of eight-way joysticks are used to control the characters, and besides these sit four buttons, fire, missile, jump and crouch. Under the hood, Narc contains a Texas Instrument circuit, the TMS34010, and became one of the first games to utilise this integrated graphics processor. Its ability to create higher definition sprites would be further exploited in games such as Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam.
Given its infamy and success, home conversions of Narc followed two years later.
The majority of these were published by Ocean Software, and developed at The Sales Curve via its internal team, Random Access. Unusually for a home arcade conversion, Narc received almost universal praise from the games press, especially for the two Commodore computers. The lone dissenting voice came from Your Sinclair, although its beef concerned more the content of the game rather than its quality. Finally, the NES version was released by Acclaim Entertainment, but was developed by Rare, thus retaining the British connection across all the home ports.
Looking back at Narc, it’s perhaps hard to see what the fuss was about. Influenced by the pulpy action movies of the day, and dystopian sci-fi flicks such as The Terminator and Robocop, it pulls few punches in its depiction of the urban wasteland, yet contains nothing particularly fresh for modern audiences, except perhaps for its tongue-in-cheek tone. Many of Narc’s characters went on to star in Acclaim’s The Power Team cartoon, most notably Max Force and the game’s chief villain, Mr Big, giving Narc life beyond the arcades and home conversions. Midway later attempted to reboot the series on PS2 in 2005, adding star power in the form of Ron Perlman and Michael Madson, but it failed to impress. While the remake has sunk into the swamp where games go to be forgotten, the original Narc remains a fan favourite, and with its unique visuals and tone, it’s clear to see why its so fondly remembered.