946th played so far
Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1988
Developer: Williams Electronics
Publisher: WMS Industries
It appears that Narc was another controversial game back when it was released because of the amount of violence in the game. That, I suspect, will be a quaint complaint knowing where we are now, but it’s interesting to note that a game where you play a narc – beating up drug dealers and taking down criminals – gets those type of objections.
We’ve got another run and gun here, mopping up another shooter. Oh well, seventy-five games left to go!
Our Thoughts
Narc isn’t a very complicated game. It’s pure run and gun – there’s very little platforming, most of it doesn’t have any at all. You go around killing your enemies and arresting lower level thugs to get to the end of each level. At the end you have to capture the boss – a character who’s introduced in a pretty nice cut scene, but doesn’t really seem to make an appearance in the actual level… other than that their duplicates appear in other levels, because despite the nice looks it seems like they needed some optimization here.
Even so, although the fighting wears you out (hint: you usually don’t need to kill everyone), it has some neat touches that keey you going. There are some extended driving levels – race ahead a bit until you crash and have to get another car – but mostly it’s shooting down a lot of enemies until you get to the end.
Final Thoughts
Narc feels good to play. The loop gets quite repetitive, but it’s a pretty fun run and gun game that does what it does really well, without getting too difficult. It’s pretty neat for what it is.