The fast pace and variety of stages actually really reminds of me Wario Ware, but Point Blank was released years before that was even a thing. This is the only mode that really seems to push the hardware in any significant way, and shooting pop up targets designed to look like criminals is zany and hilarious. My absolute favorite mini-game involves a 3D environment your character moves through (via a first person perspective) as targets pop up on all sides of the screen. They rarely stand still, and you’ll have to shoot objects like falling leaves, fish swimming across the screen, items falling from above, etc. The biggest change up in these challenges is the trajectory of your projectiles. You’re given a very small amount of time as per each challenge, and this makes the game extra frantic especially when you’re playing with a second player. If there’s one perfect word to describe Point Blank then it’s ‘hectic.’ Each gameplay section lasts for only a matter of seconds with goals that range from shooting a specific number of targets to hitting all incoming projectiles before they can reach the edge of the screen. I’m happy overall with the additional content which makes this one of the meatiest light gun games I’ve ever played. It isn’t drastically different, but does add enough new content to make this feel like a full fledged home release instead of a quick and dirty port of the arcade version like so many other developers are guilty of. The arrange mode is played in almost the same fashion, but it adds a bit more meat to the experience with new stages and objectives to complete. Should you fail to complete the outlined goal you lose a life and move on. When you complete each of them you move on to the next challenges and so forth until you’ve played through them all. Each is treated as its own level, and you’re given the choice between four different stages at a time. Arcade takes you through the basic coin-op version wherein you select a difficulty and then you’re off through a series of different gameplay objectives each of which obviously involves shooting on-screen objects. This home release features two different modes both arcade and and arrange. There’s not much of a set up here simply plug in your controller turn on the console and you’re good to go. I’m truly disappointed in myself for waiting so long to play it. I wasn’t interested in the genre back then (aside from putting a few quarters in Time Crisis and Virtua Cop here and there) but now I’m a big fan and decided today to give Point Blank a look. It also doesn’t hurt that it made use of the legendary Guncon controller which has gone down in history as one of the best light guns ever released. This is a gallery style shooter with a very ‘carnival’ twist to it and was noteworthy because it didn’t focus entirely around violence. Namco apparently tried to buck this trend in the mid 90s by releasing Point Blank in the arcades, and eventually porting it to the Sony PlayStation. Admittedly there’s not a lot you can do with the genre it’s about shooting incoming enemies across various set pieces, and then moving on to the next one. A few developers such as Namco and Sega worked hard to keep it alive, releasing polygonal shooters in arcades and porting them to home consoles in the 32-bit era, but in the generation that followed they were all but ignored by the market. Their popularity piqued in the arcades, and the scene has long been in decline with the advent of 3D gaming. It’s sad to admit but light gun shooters have long been on their way out of the market.
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