There Were Great Games Before Cutie Q
As you may have read on this blog’s home page, the name Candy Corn Soldiers is a reference to the little monster guys from Namco’s Cutie Q, released in 1979. A breakout/pinball hybrid, it’s one of my all time favorite arcade games.
But Cutie Q is actually the third game in a trilogy, preceded by Gee Bee (1978) and Bomb Bee (1979) that were functionally very similar. Despite my affinity for Cutie Q, I’ve never actually played the previous two games, so today I decided to rectify part of that by giving Gee Bee a spin.
Cutie Q is noteworthy for featuring cute little characters like the aforementioned soldiers. It was the first Namco game (and one of the first games period) to embrace the idea of cute characters, an idea that designer Toru Iwatani expanded upon with Pac-Man a year later. We know how that worked out. Gee Bee predates the introduction of any cute sprites and features a plain breakout board, albeit with a nice color scheme.
As far as the gameplay goes, yeah it’s very similar to what I’m familiar with from Cutie Q (which is good!) and uses the same two paddle setup where you have a top paddle and a bottom paddle but they are controlled in unison. It really is essentially just a simple pinball table, with the flippers replaced by breakout paddles. But it’s fun! I prefer Cutie Q just because I like the characters and the board layout is a bit better, but Gee Bee (and presumably Bomb Bee, which I’ll have to try eventually) is another serving* of a thing I already really like.
The other thing I wanted to throw in here about this trilogy is that they are sort of the ultimate “simple game.” People say “anyone can play this game” about a lot of games, but Gee Bee really is like the absolute most simple game ever concocted in a way that even your grandparents would be able to easily understand it after 5 seconds. Space Invaders and Pac-Man are simple games, but they still require a bit of video-game-brain to really grasp them. But the Pong/Breakout family is just instant for everyone. It makes these games fantastic for a game night because everyone can play, and everyone starts on even footing. If I want to play hot seat multiplayer with my friends who are not arcade-knowers, in most games I just have an automatic knowledge advantage. I know how the Pac-Man ghosts work, and they might not. No such problem with Gee Bee, which is fantastic. Break this one out with your family and friends and have everyone play a few rounds competing for the top score and you’ll have a great time.
*I know, I know, technically it’s the other way around but this is the order I played them in. Don’t get mad at me.