# Another Holy Grail Arcade Game - NARC by Williams!

**Source:** RetroRalph  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2021-10-22  
**Duration:** 11m 15s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH_Gp38Ay0E

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## Analysis

RetroRalph acquires a NARC arcade cabinet by Williams, designed by Eugene Jarvis, documenting its condition, hardware, and gameplay. The machine notably lacks its original 19-inch medium-resolution CRT and uses an LCD replacement. Ralph discusses the technical details of the cabinet, its maintenance history, and plays the game, highlighting its controversial but beloved nature as a classic arcade title.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] NARC uses a 19-inch medium resolution CRT that is difficult to find today — _Ralph explains he installed an LCD because he 'cannot find a medium resolution CRT' and notes these CRTs are 'not very easy to come by'_
- [MEDIUM] Only three games used the 19-inch medium resolution CRT: Super Sprint, NARC, and Atari's Tubing — _Ralph states: 'The only games I know of that had those 19-inch medium resolution CRTs are Super Sprint, NARC, and I think Atari's Tubin'_
- [HIGH] Eugene Jarvis now runs Raw Thrills — _Ralph credits Eugene Jarvis as NARC's designer and states 'he now runs Raw Thrills'_
- [HIGH] Ralph acquired the NARC cabinet for $500 — _Ralph explicitly states: 'I got it for 500 i did have to pay for shipping'_
- [HIGH] Arcade Alex from Kaneda's Pinball Podcast helped locate the machine — _Ralph thanks 'Arcade Alex from Kaneda's Pinball Podcast who helped me locate this machine'_

### Notable Quotes

> "NARC, made by Williams Arcade Cabinet. One of my favorite games of all time."
> — **RetroRalph**, ~2:45
> _Establishes emotional connection to the machine and its significance as a holy grail acquisition_

> "Eugene is an absolute arcade god and he now runs Raw Thrills"
> — **RetroRalph**, ~1:30
> _Credits designer and establishes his continued influence in arcade gaming_

> "I cannot find a medium resolution CRT. Yeah, this game used a 19-inch medium resolution CRT. They're actually not very easy to come by."
> — **RetroRalph**, ~3:30
> _Explains the technical challenge of maintaining original hardware and why LCD replacements are common_

> "I remember playing this as a kid being like, I feel like I'm doing something wrong. Like, I don't think I would have wanted my mom at the time to know I played this game."
> — **RetroRalph**, ~18:00
> _Acknowledges the controversial/transgressive nature of NARC's drug-dealing theme that made it memorable_

> "I'm so excited. This is another one of my personal holy grail arcades that I was able to get."
> — **RetroRalph**, ~2:15
> _Demonstrates the significance of this acquisition to the collector_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| NARC | game | Williams arcade cabinet from the mid-1980s designed by Eugene Jarvis; features drug-dealing themed action gameplay |
| Eugene Jarvis | person | Legendary arcade game designer who created NARC, Robotron 2084, Smash TV, Total Carnage, and the Cruisin' series; currently runs Raw Thrills |
| RetroRalph | person | Arcade collector and YouTuber documenting the acquisition and restoration of NARC cabinet |
| Arcade Alex | person | Community member from Kaneda's Pinball Podcast who helped locate the NARC machine for RetroRalph |
| Williams | company | Classic arcade manufacturer that produced NARC and other iconic games |
| Raw Thrills | company | Current arcade company run by Eugene Jarvis |
| Twisted Quarter | company | Manufacturer of arcade LCD monitors used as replacement in NARC cabinet |
| Kaneda's Pinball Podcast | organization | Podcast platform where Arcade Alex is associated; community-focused pinball/arcade media |
| Mark Storino | person | Technician who performed final burn-in testing on this NARC cabinet |
| Robotron 2084 | game | Classic arcade game designed by Eugene Jarvis |
| Smash TV | game | Arcade game designed by Eugene Jarvis; features similar joystick controls to NARC |
| Total Carnage | game | Arcade game designed by Eugene Jarvis |
| Super Sprint | game | Arcade game that used 19-inch medium resolution CRT display like NARC |
| X-Men | game | Arcade game with similar joystick controls to NARC |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Arcade cabinet acquisition and restoration, Hardware maintenance and CRT availability challenges, Classic arcade game design and Eugene Jarvis
- **Secondary:** LCD monitor replacements in vintage arcades, Arcade collector community and peer support, NARC gameplay mechanics and theme
- **Mentioned:** Arcade cabinet control panel restoration

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.85) — RetroRalph expresses genuine excitement and appreciation for acquiring the machine, thanks the community for support, and demonstrates enthusiasm during gameplay. Minor frustrations noted regarding missing internal bezel and LCD temporary solution, but overall tone is celebratory and content.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Arcade Alex from Kaneda's Pinball Podcast actively assisted in locating the NARC machine, demonstrating community members helping each other acquire games (confidence: high) — Ralph states: 'I want to have a special thank you to Arcade Alex from Kaneda's Pinball Podcast who helped me locate this machine' and emphasizes 'how the community is looking out for each other'
- **[technology_signal]** 19-inch medium resolution CRTs used in NARC, Super Sprint, and Atari Tubing are difficult to source, leading to prevalence of LCD replacements in the field (confidence: high) — Ralph explains he 'cannot find a medium resolution CRT' and notes 'They're actually not very easy to come by' and 'this is probably why when you see a NARC somewhere out in the wild, it probably doesn't have a CRT'

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## Transcript

 Okay, so what's the deal with the gore? Today's your lucky day. If it works, I want it. I already have it. Oh my gosh, you're always competing with me! How much do you want for the gore? What do you want to see? I don't really care about the stuff inside. I don't really care about the screen or the game board or any of the stuff or even the joystick. 50 bucks. Yeah, I could do that. Wait, what? I'm incredibly pissed off right now. All right, Derek, Captain America and the Avengers, how much? I want it. Hold it. I'll give you 800 bucks. We still have yet to find the Holy Grail. Attention, dark one. Oh no, the night man. 5-1-1, inside west. Let's go. NARC, made by Williams Arcade Cabinet. One of my favorite games of all time. Okay, we just gotta jump right into it. I can't believe it. I'm so excited. This is another one of my personal holy grail arcades that I was able to get, and it is a NARC by Eugene Jarvis. You may know Eugene Jarvis because he made such games as Robotron 2084, Smash TV, Total Carnage, the list goes on the cruisin series the list goes on and on eugene is an absolute arcade god and he now runs raw thrills so props to eugene but before we get started here i want to have a special thank you to arcade alex from canada props to canada who helped me locate this machine i got it for 500 i did have to pay for shipping but it's really cool how the community is looking out for each other and they try to figure out or help other people acquire games. So I can't thank you enough. Thank you, Arcade Alex. Okay, now let's dive right into this machine. You'll notice right away, the elephant in the room is it doesn't have a CRT. It has an LCD. I actually installed this LCD, believe it or not, because I cannot find a medium resolution CRT. Yeah, this game used a 19-inch medium resolution CRT. They're actually not very easy to come by. and this is probably why when John Youssi a NARC somewhere out in the wild, it probably doesn't have a CRT. I'm not saying they all don't, but a lot of them don't have CRTs because of that. The only games I know of that had those 19-inch medium resolution CRTs are Super Sprint, NARC, and I think Tubin. Atari's Tubin. So yeah, there we go. But anyways, let's dive right into this I wanna show you guys all the ROM chips this thing uses Like Eugene was going crazy back then or whoever the development team was for the hardware They have so many damn ROM chips on this thing You have no idea So we gonna take a look at the hardware when I take a look at the condition of the machine And then we'll do some gameplay and wrap things up. Okay, so we're gonna shoot this thing vlog style So the control panel itself looks awesome. These are the Wiko joysticks So these are found on lots of these games Smash TV has a very similar joystick to this same with I think it's X-Men a lot of the them use the joystick similar to this the joystick on the right side is in good condition the left is all floppy because there's a little stabilizer in the middle that's busted on this one it's still actually surprisingly works but it's busted so I'll have to replace that or at least fix the stabilizer the buttons are some some of them are in bad condition like this green one I'm gonna open up the panel really quick, but the artwork looks actually really good for being the original artwork. I don't think I'll change that unless, you know, something comes up. Under the control panel, you'll see most of these Williams games use leaf switches, so you'll see they're all leaf switches connected to the buttons. It's interesting, there was a light here. I replaced it with an LED, but you really don't see it. You don't see it at all, so I don't know. Maybe I need to use just a regular incandescent bulb because it really doesn't work well with the LED in it. So there you can see the joystick right there. And like I said, this side seems okay. The left side does not. And again, that light isn't really doing anything. So I'm not really sure what that's all about. You can see the inside of the system there. We're going to open that up. There's a back door and it actually opens on a hinge. So I'll show you what that's all about. And then the control panel just latches down with those two. You go in through the coin door for that. So we're just going to put that back. Now the reason for the LCD is because, so this actually didn't have a CRT in it. It actually had an LCD, but it was flopping all around. I happen to have one of these. This is actually from Twisted Quarter. It's more of an arcade LCD, so you can actually put your arcade board directly to it. So there isn't any kind of converter board or anything you just go straight RGB from your actual game board to the monitor so pretty cool the actual bezel which is one piece so this is actually one glass piece so the whole entire front bezel is a glass piece and it's in really good shape the bummer is there's a internal bezel that goes in here to sort of hide the monitor and that's missing so when whoever had this assuming an arcade operator when he had it they pulled the CRT out and they must have scrapped that internal bezel which is kind of a bummer because I'm gonna have to come up with a solution to mask off the LCD for now I definitely going to be putting a CRT in this 100 it just that right now I want to play it so we gonna have to do it this way for right now Let go along the back side. Okay we're around back and I'm actually shocked at how well maintained this system is. So what you're looking at right here is all of these chips are the game ROMs. So these all of those are game ROMs. So hopefully none of those die and if they do well then I'll have to be burning new ones so hopefully that continues to work okay then down here you have a sound board so you have the sound board and then I'm believe this board is the CPU and memory and then there's an interface board so there's a lot going on here and but it's all really well maintained and it looks like the final test of this system was done by Mark Storino so Mark if you're still out there thank you so much for you know burn doing the burn-in test on this machine it's still working today believe it or not. So in the inside, I'll take the camera off and I can show you the inside, but it looks pretty clean in here as well. I'm pretty impressed. Okay, so moving on in the cabinet, you've got a switching power supply. So I'm assuming that was replaced from the original, which is cool because it's a SUSO HAP-1. Those tend to be pretty reliable. Next to it, this is an isolation transformer. So typically power goes into here and then it goes up from here to the actual monitor. So in this case it's going to the LCD monitor. Over there is the potentiometer to adjust the volume. There's an actual test switch so the other side of this puts the game into test mode. There's a switch you can access it from the front and then here's what I was talking about. So the actual game video goes here. So whoever it was before me hacked it up a little bit but basically I ran the game video output to here and then you'll notice it goes all the way up. We'll check that out in a minute but that goes up to the LCD monitor. The speakers look like they're in good condition. I'm still trying to figure out what that is. I almost feel like it was a transducer of some kind. It's in the middle so if anybody's watching this and knows what that is let me know. I'm really curious. I've never really seen that before so yeah hook me up if anybody knows. You'll see there's these safety switches. Oh my light sorry. There's safety switches all over the place. those are so that when you're working on the game when the door comes off you can you know you're not going to get shocked or electrocuted and then you can see the back side of the controls and the speakers and everything all still look really good so let me um i'll follow that wire up and you can see the back of the monitor okay here's the game pro monitor by twisted quarter and you can see you can actually plug in it says cga and ega and you can also plug in VGA So CGA would be standard resolution EGA would be medium resolution and I think VGA would be high resolution and then there SVGA But the cool thing about this is it supports all of those so it just adjust accordingly. But the cool thing is that you can plug your arcade board directly to it. The image is really nice. They seem to work really well. And if you were going to put an LCD in a game these are actually really nice ones same with the wells gardener ones but yeah this is the twisted quarter one and it works really good it's called the game pro so anyways so hopefully this isn't a permanent resident in here it's at least in here until i can find myself a medium resolution crt all right let's play some narc so i've got it set to free play this game super iconic game. Again, Eugene Jarvis, the developer, created lots of awesome games, but this is definitely one of those let's put Williams back on the map kind of games, and let's do something completely radical and against the grain, and I remember playing this as a kid being like, I feel like I'm doing something wrong. Like, I don't think I would have wanted my mom at the time to know I played this game, if you know what I mean, but it's a super fun game. The objective is really easy. You're just killing these drug dealers, basically. Now, you can bust them without killing them, like I'll do it right now. You do get a little bit more points for doing that, so sometimes that might be a better strategy if you care about how many points. But, you know, games of this era, it was all about how many points can you get, how far can you get in the game, stuff like that. So definitely, you know, if you're a big fan of this game, you'll want to be aware of that. But yeah, the rocket launcher is awesome, and in the menu in the game, you can actually give yourself more rockets by default. I think you can go all the way up to 10 by default, where I think the settings of the game don't give you many. But you can acquire them throughout the game and stuff like that. So anyways, I'm enjoying this. I'm having a fun time. If you liked games like this, let me know. I want to know if you're a NARC fan or if you, you know, if this is one of those games where it didn't really pull on those heartstrings, those nostalgia heartstrings for you. But I'd love to hear that in the comments below. Definitely give me a thumbs up if you enjoyed the video. And I appreciate you guys watching. Subscribe if you enjoy this kind of content. And we will see you on the next one. We'll see you next time.

_(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: beccb77c-e8a8-47c5-bcfa-dfbdde5602b8*