After more than a decade, Midway and VIS Entertainment (the minds behind Rockstar’s State of Emergency) are teaming up to revive one of the most well-respected cult-classics in the world of arcade gaming. That’s right, NARC is back, and looking better than ever thanks to an enhanced version of the notorious State of Emergency engine. Sure, that game had its flaws, but anyone who played it should have seen the massive amounts of potential oozing from its pores. NARC is taking that game’s promise and building on it 100-fold.

Like in the original, you’ll assume the roles of Hitman (Red Dude) or Max Force (Blue Dude) in your quest to take down the infamous drug lord, "Mr. Big" and his evil cartel of scum-sucking dealers, KRAK. The KRAK crew is pushing a new drug called liquid soul, among other things (crack, cocaine etc.) and it’s your job to put a stop to the madness... or get rich. It’s up to you really. In essence, you can actually play through the game as a good or bad cop. Good cops will do their duty and return the confiscated money and drugs they acquire on the streets while bad cops will sell the drugs themselves. However, you’ll have to keep an eye on your badge meter because once it drops to a certain level, there will be consequences, including (but not limited to) other cops treating you as a criminal and chasing you down Rodney King style. Another cool feature in NARC (relating to the bad cop rating in a sense) is your ability to use the drugs for special limited stat boosts, such as snorting cocaine for a boost of speed or smoking pot to go into an alternate plain of existence known as "weed time" (a.k.a. - "bullet time" for the average gamer).

Though the game appears to be rather open-ended, NARC will be, in some way, mission-based, using police radio transmissions to provide you with info on where to go next and you’ll also have a large inventory of weapons to choose from, including rocket launchers, pistols, sniper rifles, and so forth. Enemies will strike back with similar weaponry, but they’re also packing a new type of weapon... needles full of dope which they can toss at you, which cause some woozy, drug-induced effects if they hit. The soundtrack will be filled with drug-themed songs from DMX, Curtis Mayfield, Lynard Skynard, and Grandmaster Flash.

As you should already be able to tell from the above information, NARC is shaping up to be the next step in videogaming pushing the envelope of what is and isn’t going to far in a game. Needless to say, with the ability to use and abuse drugs and alcohol, an abundance of blood and violence, and a healthy dose of profanity, NARC will boast a Mature rating. The game has recently been pushed back to an early 2005 release, but there should be plenty of information available on the game at next week’s E3 convention, so be sure and stay tuned to Gaming Headlines for regular updates. JS