Point Blank (also known as Gun Bullet in Japan) is a shooting game series by Namco for the Arcade, PlayStation and Nintendo DS. It was originally a trilogy first made by Namco since 1994, later Namco created two ports for the PlayStation and the Nintendo DS (called Point Blank DS) were later developed and released in 1998 and 2006 respectively.
Players use an attached light gun (or in the case of the DS, a stylus) to hit targets onscreen. Missions require speed, quick judgement or pinpoint accuracy.
The game consists of non-violent, all ages, shooting contests like shooting targets (and avoiding bombs), shooting cardboard targets, shooting the target of player color, protecting the iconic Dr. Don and Dr. Dan, and other miscellaneous challenges.
The player chooses the desired difficulty level which will determine how many stages must be finished to complete the game in order to finish, as well as their overall difficulty. Players are shown four missions in each grouping, and may attempt them in any order. Players have only three lives for the entire game. Players can lose lives by:-
- Failing to complete a mission in the time limit
- Shooting a bomb (a black ball with skull and fuse)
- Letting Dr. Dan or Dr. Don die in any mission where the player must protect them
- Incorrectly answering questions by shooting wrong answers
- Shooting a cardboard civilian
- Shooting the opposite targets
Point Blank was originally created for the arcades in 1994 but a console version was later for the PlayStation in 1997, this version included an arrange mode which added an alternate version of Arcade mode, as well as adding many gameplay modes alongside an RPG mode titled Quest.
At the 2006 Game Developers Conference in San Jose, CA a Nintendo DS port of the game was announced. The console's stylus and touch screen is used in place of the light gun. The finished game was released in North America on June 13, 2006, two days after the North American release of the Nintendo DS Lite.
Source: Wikipedia, "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Blank_2," available under the CC-BY-SA License.