Before
1978,
Namco's only real
business in
video games was porting over
Atari's games to the
Japanese market. Gee Bee changed that line of business
forever. It was Namco's first
original arcade game.
The game was essentially a Breakout clone with a pinball style slant to the gameplay. On first glance it appears to be a color game, but it uses the early arcade gimmick of color overlay strips. In the arcades it was distributed by Sega/Gremlin, and apparently never made it to American shores. The game did respectable if not remarkable numbers, and at least got them to make a sequel and a similar game with more character the next year. But it didn't really matter because they had their first big success with other genres.
Namco --- Bomb Bee