NARC was a hit, its HD display and digitised graphics attracting a lot of attention. The animation was more sophisticated than anything other games could offer, and the insane gameplay made the cabinet a real spectacle. While there was some controversy over the violence, it was nothing the team wasn’t expecting. “Someone wrote that it was ‘a surrealistic nightmare’,” says Jarvis, with understandable pride. “We got press, but by cloaking the whole experience in justice, we got away with a lot.”

NARC may not be as timeless as Robotron or Defender, but the Jarvis trademark of crowds of onscreen enemies gives the game a lasting visual appeal, and the crush of bodies feeds into the gameplay. “Like Robotron, every little thing has its own agenda,” explains Jarvis. “In NARC, some enemies want to seek you out, some are trying to get drugs, some want to drop bombs; they all have different goals. If you can get five or six varying agendas out there, you get a rich ecosystem that’s different every time.”

NARC also provides a snapshot of the videogame business going through a transition. “It was a paradigm shift from the one-coin marathon to the idea of continuing, where people would unload money to get further,” explains Jarvis. “Suddenly you get bosses to provide a barrier. You say: ‘We need to take $3 from the guy right now!’ It’s a commercial artform, so the game was just a minefield. When people finish this kind of game, they move on; we wanted them to spend hundreds of dollars to get to the end.”



Central to the financial imperative was the boss, Mr Big, a gigantic jowly head who is somehow able to manage a drug cartel despite not having any hands to speak of. “That sequence was just amazing,” raves Jarvis. “You shoot the guy’s head, then you shoot his tongue, his head blows off and you shoot his skull. There’s spinal vertebrae and the head’s bobbing around. It’s an amazing piece of programming by Todd Allen. There’s a science to it. You shoot out the vertebrae, and have to get in the right shot as he opens his mouth: it’s a richer boss than most were.”

Jarvis rates NARC in his personal top five, which means it’s on a par with Smash TV, but not quite up to the standards of Robotron or Defender. “It was a very beautiful game. People hadn’t seen anything like this before. That’s the neat thing about videogames. When Doom first came out, it was: ‘Oh my God, I’m in this whole new world!’ It’s getting harder, and we’re more jaded, but there’s always room for something new.”