NARC busts the arcades in December 1988


There it was, in the dim, flickering neon haze of the American arcade in that fateful winter of 1988—December, to be precise—when the coin-op palaces still pulsed like the heart of the republic's youth culture, those cavernous temples of beeping salvation where the teenagers of the Reagan era gathered to escape the banalities of suburban life and plunge quarters into the maw of electronic ecstasy. And suddenly, BOOM!, exploding onto the scene like a rocket launcher in a crack den, came an arcade machine as addictive as crack but cheaper to use: NARC, from Williams Electronics. The wizard behind this cartel-busting curtain? None other than Eugene Jarvis, the maestro behind Defender and Robotron, now turning his genius to the hottest mania of the moment: the War on Drugs.

Picture it, if you will: the cabinet itself, a towering monolith of black and blood-red, emblazoned with the slogan, "Say no to drugs!" Inside, digitized graphics—real photographs turned sprites, a technological wizardry courtesy of the Texas Instruments TMS34010, the first 32-bit beast in arcade history—bringing to life a world of urban decay that looked almost too real, too fleshy, for the fluorescent-lit sanctums where Pac-Man once frolicked innocently.

You, the player—one or two, for cooperative mayhem—step into the armored boots of Max Force (blue uniform) or Hit Man (red), elite operatives of the Narcotics Opposition, dispatched by some shadowy chairman in Washington to dismantle the empire of Mr. Big, that enigmatic overlord peddling KRAK, the devil's own powder. And how do you dismantle? Not with subpoenas or warrants, oh no...!!! With machine guns that chatter like angry typewriters and rocket launchers that turn human targets into exploding fountains of digitized gore—limbs flying, bodies bursting in crimson pixels, junkies and dealers reduced to twitching heaps as the screen fills with confiscated cash and baggies of white death.

The clown Kinky Pinky, that psychotic abductor; the hypodermic-wielding Dr. Spike Rush; the...er...rock-headed Joe Rockhead—they all demand the ultimate sanction. And the levels!!! A junkyard crawl, a sunset strip siege, a nursery of towering marijuana plants, culminating in the lair where Mr. Big reveals himself not as a man, but a gigantic, laughing robotic head—boom!!!—exploded into oblivion, the screen flashing: "You have completed the NARC training mission... Nice work. CONTACT YOUR LOCAL DEA RECRUITER."

It was the Reagan era distilled into pure adrenaline: Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" colliding head-on with Rambo's body count, the anti-drug hysteria of mandatory minimums and D.A.R.E. programs funneled through the joystick into a catharsis of hyper-violence. Parents clutched pearls—ultra-violent! gore! drugs on screen!—yet the kids lined up, quarters clinking, because here was permission: blow away the scum, seize their stash, save the nation one explosion at a time. Satire? Propaganda? Who could tell in that electric roar of bass-heavy sound samples—"Busted!" "Oh no, it's the narcs!"—masking the thumping soundtrack?

NARC is one of the greatest arcade games of all time. Many a quarter roll of mine emptied its paper-wrapped contents into its coin slot. I never could beat the arcade version, but soundly whipped the Nintendo NES conversion, and can confirm it, too, displayed the DEA recruitment message at the end. One might have been tempted to enlist, if the government hadn't made clear its lack of seriousness in prosecuting the "war on drugs," beyond whatever racial, societal, or corrupt personal profit ends it could pursue under its cynical guise.

"No one had the guts...until now" was a prescient slogan for the game way back in 1988. Four decades later, the scourge of illegal - and legal - drugs continues to ravage and kill Americans. The purveyors of these narcotics - from foreign cartels to the CIA - continue to peddle and profit unabated. Today, the American government is a full-blown-but-butt-ugly cheerleader for drug use, pushing marijuana addiction despite knowing its dangerous impacts on the mind and body. Why does your government want your mind blitzed out on drugs? Everyone should be asking that question. None of the answers could be reassuring.

No one had the guts...and they still don't today.

Location: Chicago, IL, USA

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