Point Blank, Arcade

Point Blank (aka Gun Bullet in Japan) is a minigame-based, humorous lightgun shooter for one or two players. It was created by Namco and initially distributed into arcades in 1994.

The 2D graphics are cartoony, colourful and well drawn, and the gameplay is fast, challenging and fun.

There are four levels of play: Practice, Beginner, Advanced, and Very Hard, each with a set number of minigames, plus a ‘Last Stage’ which congratulates you for finishing.

The player – either on their own or against a second player – must shoot their way through a variety of short shooting challenges and meet the requirements to pass each test. Failing a challenge loses a life, and you only have three lives per credit (your lives being shown as hearts at the bottom of the screen). Of course, if you run out of lives you can put in more credits and continue where you left off, which is of course what the game manufacturer wanted.

Some minigame challenges are relatively standard (like shooting a certain number of skeletons jumping out of coffins), and some are quite innovative and funny (like shooting piranhas that leap out of the water and try to eat characters hanging from ropes that you must protect). Some challenges are even quite surprising – like being given just a single bullet to hit a moving target, or shooting up a car with a set amount of bullets, in order to make it explode. There’s also a bonus stage where you must shoot the right target among a number of objects in order to try to obtain an extra life. Even the high score name entry is made into a minigame, which I thought was cool.

Point Blank is a jolly and enjoyable shooting experience, without being overtly violent, and from what I saw of the game it is very much kid-friendly.

The game was enough of a success that Point Blank became a popular series of arcade games and home console ports. All of which followed the same format, but each having different minigames. A PlayStation version of Point Blank was released in 1997. Point Blank 2 and Ghoul Panic followed in 1999; Point Blank 3 in 2000; Point Blank DS (for the Nintendo DS) in 2006; Point Blank Adventures (for Android and iOS) in 2015, and Point Blank X (a modern arcade game) in 2016.