Namco, shortly after graduating college. Before the arrival of Iwatani, Namco was in the midst of publishing Atari arcade games in Japan, following their acquisition of Atari Japan a few years prior. Iwatani had wanted to create pinball machines as opposed to video games; however, Namco higher-ups disapproved of his idea. As a compromise of sorts, Iwatani was allowed to instead create a video game based on the concept of pinball, akin to Atari's Video Pinball dedicated console, intermixed with the gameplay elements established in Breakout. Ishimura would assist with programming. Due to hardware limitations, strips of cellophane were applied to the monitor to compensate for the lack of color. The actual layout of the game board is made to resemble a human face. The game was named after the Japanese word for carpenter bee, "kumanbachi", and used the same font type from Atari's unreleased arcade title Cannonball from 1976. Gee Bee was first released in Japan in October 1978. That same year, Gremlin Industries licensed the game outside Japan. Reception and legacy The game is reported to have sold nearly 10,000 units, which was a good sales figure for its time. However, Gee Bee was not as successful as Namco hoped it would be, due to coin drop earnings per unit falling below expectations and due to competition from Taito's Space Invaders. Nevertheless, Gee Bee was the eighth highest-earning arcade video game of 1978 in Japan, and helped establish Namco as a prime video game developer in Japan, leading to them producing their own arcade games alongside publishing those from other companies. The November 11, 1978 issue of Cashbox complimented the game's cabinet artwork, while the December 30 issue stated that it had a "good looking cabinet and graphics". In a retrospective, Earn Green of Allgame noted the game's importance for Namco, being Toru Iwatani's first video game for the company. Retro Gamer listed Gee Bee as one of the best Breakout clones for its notability as Namco's first internally designed video game. Gee Bee would spawn two sequel titles – Bomb Bee was released a year later in 1979. This game includes colorized graphics, new gameplay additions such as a 1,000 point pop bumper, and the ability to earn extra lives. A second sequel, Cutie Q, was released in 1979 – this one was not developed by Iwatani, but rather Shigeru Yokoyama, who would later create Galaga, although