DESCRIPTION

An early Namco arcade game, Gee Bee is the first designed by Toru Iwitani, a game designer who was trying to approximate his favorite game, pinball, in video form with some new elements. As with many video games in 1978, Gee Bee achieved its minimal color palette by placing colored overlays on a black-and-white monitor (a follow-up game, Bomb Bee, used a color monitor). After Gee Bee and Bomb Bee, Iwitani's next major project for Namco was a game he created involving a yellow creature eating dots in a maze and avoiding monsters: Pac-Man.

In Gee Bee, players try to maneuver a ball around a playing field that's a cross between pinball and Breakout. Players control a Breakout-style paddle along the bottom of the screen to keep the ball in play while attempting to remove as many layers of bricks along the edges of the screen as possible. Bumpers rebound the ball toward the player's paddle — or, worse yet, toward where the player's paddle isn't. ~ Earl Green, All Game Guide