In 1978, the arcade scene was a chaotic bazaar of quarter-pumping kids craving video euphoria. This was a generation before Sonic the Hedgehog speed freaks and the Tekken gods, and all they knew was the Asteroids vector-lined void. Among the primordial chaos emerged Gee Bee, Namco’s first arcade video game ever, a Frankensteinian mash of Breakout‘s brick-bashing paddle action and pinball’s bumper bashing. For a game that’s nearly a half-century old as of this review, it obviously won’t hold a candle to anything made in the last 30 years, but there’s hope that it could still be fun on its own merits. Thanks to the team at Hamster and their pursuit to preserve arcade classics, it’s time to experience Namco’s first step into the game industry with Arcade Archives 2: Gee Bee!
Gee Bee is from an era before anyone considered video games as anything more than a slot machine that doesn’t pay out. There are no heroes, quests, or a babe to save from a dragon. All the game has to offer is the cheap thrill of a square ball smashing through blocks, and bloop sounds from ricocheting off a bumper. The title nods to “Gee Bee,” a cutesy cartoon bee mascot splashed across the cabinet art, while the in-game visuals are as bare and abstract as a Piet Mondrian piece if he couldn’t afford colour.
Gee Bee isn’t much to look at, and it doesn’t have much going on in the audio department either. There’s no music, and the sounds are sparse bleeps and bloops. The minimalistic sound design was typical for most video games in the 1970s, whether it was on a ColecoVision or an Atari 2600. At the arcades, music was a rarity for a game, and that is especially the case for Gee Bee.
The gameplay is as Spartan as it gets. Gee Bee is a very early Breakout-like, so it lacks many of the features seen in later iterations, like Arkanoid or Shatter. What made Gee Bee distinct was controlling two different paddles to bounce the “ball” back at bricks, NAMCO letters, or bumpers. There isn’t much technique involved, and most of the time, players will be at the mercy of the physics, which behave convincingly. The main gimmick of this game was that it had two knobs to move the paddles, which were very sensitive and accurate. Obviously, this isn’t supported in a modern console release, but the Switch 2 Pro controller feels good enough.
While it may have been Namco’s first game ever, it would be easy to mistake Gee Bee to be the first game ever made in existence. After about 60 seconds, gamers will have seen all that it has to offer. The object of keeping the ball bouncing and racking up a high score barely had novelty when this was new, and the lack of stimulating imagery doomed Gee Bee to obscurity. There’s a good reason why Pac-Man overshadows this game in every regard. Namco’s first title is merely a footnote in its storied history.
Arcade Archives 2: Gee Bee includes a few extra features that most people won’t care about because this is Gee Bee. The game is so simplistic and focused on one thing that there isn’t much it can offer apart from the standard Arcade Archives features. The time attack modes and other gimmicks barely impact the way it’s played. The features could’ve been cut entirely and nobody would notice.
