Point Blank

About Point Blank

Point Blank (1994), Gun Bullet in Japan, is Namco's non-violent light-gun party game of quick shooting challenges, hosted by Dr. Dan and Dr. Don, that EGM ranked among the best arcade games of all time.

Point Blank in Depth

Two players with light guns take on short, non-violent shooting contests that test speed, judgement or pinpoint accuracy: hitting bullseyes in their own colour, gunning down cardboard criminals while sparing cardboard civilians, avoiding bombs, and protecting the hosts Dr. Dan and Dr. Don. The difficulty chosen, from Practice and Beginner to Advanced and Very Hard, sets how many stages must be cleared and how tough they are. Missions come in groups of four that can be tackled in any order. Players usually have three lives for the whole game, losing one for missing a stage's quota or shooting a forbidden target, and most stages give unlimited bullets.

The stages fall into six types. Accuracy rewards hitting the highest-scoring areas; Intelligence means counting to sixteen by shooting numbers; Memory is a card-matching game; Simulation has players shoot robbers but not civilians, or ninjas but not geishas in the Japanese theme; Visual Acuity asks for the target matching a picture; and Speed is a race to shoot targets of the player's colour. At the end the game ranks the player on points, lives left and continues used and suggests what to try next, from a harder difficulty to more practice.

Making Point Blank

Namco released Point Blank in arcades in 1994; like its first light-gun game, Steel Gunner, it penalises shooting bombs and cardboard civilians. It was Japan's seventh highest-grossing dedicated arcade game of 1995 and, according to EGM, a "cult favorite" in American arcades. The PlayStation version arrived in 1997 and was the third best-selling game in Japan in the week ending 10 August. Critics praised its variety: it tied with Resident Evil 2 for EGM's Game of the Month, GameSpot said it was "so enjoyable and difficult to put down you won't be bothered by the audiovisual shortcomings", and Next Generation found its quest mode forced but its two-player contests a highlight. EGM listed it as the seventh best arcade game of all time in 1997. Point Blank 2 followed in 1999 and then Point Blank 3, and a Nintendo DS collection used the stylus instead of a gun.