Gee Bee (video game)
Namco's first in-house video game, blending Breakout and pinball.
Gee Bee is a 1978 block breaker and pinball video game developed and published by Namco for arcades. It was the first video game designed in-house by Namco, created by Toru Iwatani, who later became known for Pac-Man and Pole Position. The game combined elements of Breakout with pinball mechanics, using a rotary knob to control paddles.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- Namco
- Publisher
- Namco (JP); Gremlin Industries (NA)
- Designer
- Toru Iwatani
- Programmer
- Shigeichi Ishimura
- Platforms
- Arcade
- Released
- October 1978 (JP); January 1979 (NA)
- Genre
- Pinball, block breaker
- Modes
- Single-player, multiplayer
Facts from the source article.
Development and release
Gee Bee was developed by Toru Iwatani as Namco's first in-house video game. In July 1976, electro-mechanical game designer Shigeichi Ishimura proposed creating a CPU-based arcade game; Namco approved and purchased PDA-08 microcomputers from NEC. Iwatani, who joined Namco in 1977, wanted to make pinball machines but was overruled; instead he created a video game combining pinball concepts with Breakout-style gameplay, with Ishimura assisting programming. Cellophane strips were applied to the monitor to compensate for the lack of color. The game board layout resembles a human face. The name comes from the Japanese word for carpenter bee, "kumanbachi", and the font was taken from Atari's unreleased 1976 title Cannonball. Gee Bee was released in Japan in October 1978 and in North America in January 1979 by Gremlin Industries.
Reception and legacy
Gee Bee sold nearly 10,000 units, a good figure for its time, but fell short of Namco's expectations due to lower-than-anticipated coin drop earnings and competition from Taito's Space Invaders. It was the eighth highest-earning arcade video game of 1978 in Japan and helped establish Namco as a major video game developer, leading them to produce their own arcade games alongside publishing others. Cashbox complimented the cabinet artwork and later noted its "good looking cabinet and graphics". Retrospectively, Allgame's Earn Green highlighted the game's importance as Toru Iwatani's first video game for Namco. Retro Gamer listed Gee Bee among the best Breakout clones for its significance as Namco's first internally designed video game. Two sequels followed in 1979: Bomb Bee, with color graphics and new features, and Cutie Q, developed by Shigeru Yokoyama (later creator of Galaga) with sprites designed by Iwatani. Cutie Q's "cute" characters inspired character design in Iwatani's next work, Pac-Man. Bomb Bee and Cutie Q were ported to PlayStation in 1996 in Namco Museum Vol. 2 (Japan only; international versions replaced them with Super Pac-Man). Cutie Q was ported to Wii in Namco Museum Remix (2007) and Namco Museum Megamix (2010). On October 2, 2025, Gee Bee was digitally re-released for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 as part of Arcade Archives, and for Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S as part of Arcade Archives 2.
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