Lost Classics: Narc (Arcade, NES, Xbox, PS2)

Forget about Nancy Regan’s “Just Say No” campaign. This is how you fight the war on drugs. You, bad ass DEA enforcer/SWAT Power Ranger agent Max Force and your buddy, the equally bad ass DEA agent/SWAT Team Power Ranger Hit Man grab your machine guns and rocket launchers, and arrest every dope fiend, d-boy, thug, and even dog (yes, dogs can be arrested) you come across, and if they refuse to come quietly, then use your rocket launcher to blow the ever living shit out of them, and watch as they explode in a shower of blood and guts. You’ll visit seedy places such as the K.R.A.K. stop, which believe it or not, is a drug lab. Wow, these cats are so flagrant that they’ll put it right out there that they’re running a crack den. Along the way, you’ll either blow up, arrest, or arrest AND blow up heroin dealers, killer clowns, super strong retarded dope fiends who dumpsters stuff at you, and guys wearing mullets who throw hypodermic syringes at you, which are presumably full of their product. You even get to get behind the wheel of your car and run criminals over.

It’s obvious that American Gangster Frank Lucas doesn’t run this drug cartel, and your main enemy is a remarkably evil bastard named Mr Big, a huge head in a wheel chair. When you beat him, he turns into a demonic robo-skull-snake thingy which you also have to kill. This was ported to Nintendo thanks to Acclaim. In a hint of irony, the NES version was promoted as the first NES game with a strong anti-drug message…yet all references to drugs were removed. Even the K.R.A.K stop was changed to K.W.A.K stop. Oddly enough, the blood and gore was still retained. Of course this was one of the many games that were re-released on the Midway Arcade Treasures compilations. The main theme is even easy to hum along to as well.

Narc was the first game that bought a real solution to the drug problem facing our nation: dress up like a Power Ranger, grab your guns, get behind the wheel of your corvette, and kill everything that moves, including dogs, hippies, and morbidly obese heads stuck in wheel chairs that turn into giant demon robo-snake skull heads after taking enough damage. It’s just too bad that Midway’s 2005 attempt at a remake was nowhere near as interesting (or original) as this classic.

Fun Fact: Narc’s Max Force was featured in the Power Team animated series, which was Acclaim’s answer to Captain N. The series centered around a teenager named Johnny Arcade as he commands a team of semi-popular characters from Acclaim Video games such as Wizards and Warriors.