Gee Bee

Gee Bee is a block breaker/video pinball hybrid arcade game developed and published by Namco in 1978. The player controls a set of paddles with a rotary knob, with the objective being to score as many points as possible by deflecting a ball against bricks, pop bumpers and other objects in the playfield. It was developed by Toru Iwatani, known as the creator of Pac-Man and Pole Position. Outside Japan, it was published by Gremlin Industries.

Gee Bee was the first video game to be designed in-house by Namco – prior to this, the company had manufactured arcade electro-mechanical games (such as Periscope and F-1) and published a number of video games by Atari, Inc. (notably Breakout) in Japan. Iwatani originally wanted to produce pinball machines for the company, but higher-ups at Namco disapproved of the idea. As a compromise, Iwatani instead made a video game with pinball-elements, combined with mechanics established in Breakout.

Gee Bee was the eighth highest-grossing arcade video game of 1978 in Japan, and sold 10,000 units worldwide. However, it was not as big of a success as hoped, but it would nevertheless help establish Namco's presence in the video game industry. Two sequels were produced in 1979, Bomb Bee and Cutie Q.

Becoro # 2024-01-12 08:56:15 - source

software: Emulated on MAME,

hardware: Namco Early 8080 arcade hardware,

display: raster

prequel of
Bomb Bee (Arcade)