''Nerf Arena Blast'' (known as ''Nerf Arena'' in Europe) is a

first-person shooter A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...

developed by Visionary Media, Inc. and published by Hasbro Interactive, released under their Atari Interactive label. The game, based on

Nerf Nerf is a toy brand formed by Parker Brothers and currently owned by Hasbro. Most of the toys are a variety of Foam weapon, foam-based weaponry, with other Nerf products including balls for sports such as American football, basketball, an ...

, was touted as a "family-friendly version of multiplayer combat games like '' Quake III: Arena'' and '' Unreal Tournament''", and was supported by Hasbro Interactive until that company gave its rights and properties over to Infogrames. The cutscenes were animated by Mondo Media alongside them doing the in-game art.

Gameplay

Single-player

The player starts on a team called the "Twisters", an amateur team competing for the "Nerf Champion of the World" title against 6 professional teams. The player must compete in each team's 3 arenas, totaling 21 playable maps (including the amateur and championship maps), plus a handful of "Bonus Round" maps. In order to compete against the next team the user has to place in the top three in each event (PointBlast, SpeedBlast, and BallBlast).

Game types

* PointBlast: PointBlast is based on the Unreal ''Deathmatch'' game type; instead of gaining kills, or ''Frags'', the player gains points by either hitting an opponent, knocking or tagging an opponent out, hitting targets in the arenas, or by picking up "Bonus Points" tokens left by "tagged out" players. * SpeedBlast: SpeedBlast is a race between players where both have to pass through seven colored flags in sequence. Players are allowed to tag each other out of the race using their Nerf guns, with the tagged players returning to the last flag they touched. * BallBlast: BallBlast is a Scavenger-hunt game type, where players fight for colored balls, in order to shoot them into targets. Doing this gives the players a certain number of points, depending on which ball they shoot in. Once a player gets the first six balls into the target, a seventh ball (called the "gold ball") is added to the game. The game is ended by any player shooting all balls including the golden ball into the target. The winner of the match is whoever has the most points when the game ends, rather than who shoots the gold ball into the target.

Multiplayer

Due to the similarities between '' Unreal Tournament'' and ''Nerf Arena Blast'', it is possible to play Pointblast in team mode, because Pointblast is essentially a Deathmatch game type in most aspects, except for the scoring system. Other than that, the game types in single player mode apply to multiplayer mode. The community has released a Capture the Flag mod, which has given rise to a large number of new maps for ''NAB''.

Expandability

''Nerf Arena Blast'' used

Unreal Engine Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter video game '' Unreal''. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of ...

and therefore supports user-made maps and add-ons to the game, but due to some parts of the engine being altered, the ability to create add-ons like in '' Unreal Tournament'' is somewhat limited. However, hundreds of maps and modifications of Unreal maps have been published, and multiple modified weapons and game modes (such as Capture the Flag) have been created.

Reception

"Nerf Arena Blast"
IGN review .8/10
GameSpot review of NAB
.0/10

References

{{reflist 1999 video games First-person shooters Hasbro Interactive games Unreal Engine 1 games Video games based on Hasbro toys Video games developed in the United States Windows games Windows-only games Multiplayer and single-player video games Arena Blast