Ludography
Point Blank 3 cover

2000 · Namco · Light gun shooter · Shooter

Point Blank 3

PlayStation console exclusive

The escapades of Namco's Dr. Dan and Dr. Don continue in Point Blank 3, the third edition of the irreverent, mini-game based light-gun series. A selection of 80 events are offered, many of which thrust the hapless duo into situations that require timely intervention by the player on their behalf, testing your reflexes and shooting accuracy at the same time.

Released
1 December 2000
Platforms
ArcadePlayStation
Genres
Light gun shooterShooter
Developers
NamcoTose
Publishers
NamcoNamco Hometek
Modes
MultiplayerSingle-player
Themes
Action
Age ratings
ESRB T
Languages
English, Japanese

About

Point Blank, known as Gun Bullet (ガンバレット, Gan Baretto), or Gunvari (ガンバリ, Ganbari) in Japan, is a series of light gun shooter games developed by Namco for the arcade, PlayStation and Nintendo DS; the trilogy was first released in arcade in 1994 and was later ported onto the PlayStation. Point Blank DS was released in 2006 for the Nintendo DS featuring 40 challenges from the original series.

Keywords

  • high score

Media

Point Blank 3 screenshot 1

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Players use two attached light guns (in the case of the DS, a pen or in the case of the iOS version, touching the screen) to hit targets onscreen; missions require speed, quick judgment or pinpoint accuracy. The game consists of non-violent shooting contests where players are tasked with challenges such as shooting player-colored bulls-eyes, cardboard criminals, and other inanimate objects, not shooting bombs and cardboard cutouts of civilians (much like in Namco's first light-gun game, Steel Gunners), and protecting characters Dr. Don and Dr. Dan, among other miscellaneous challenges, similar to games like Police Trainer, and Area 51: Site 4 - and players choose the desired difficulty level (Practice, Beginner, Advanced, and Very Hard in the first game, or Training, Beginner, Advanced, and Insane in the second game onwards) which will determine how many stages must be finished to complete the game, as well as their overall difficulty.

Players are shown four missions in each grouping, and may attempt them in any order; they usually have only three lives for the entire game, but this may depend on the cabinet settings. Most stages have unlimited bullets, but some have a limited amount of ammo. Players lose lives if they fail to fulfill the stage quota, or shoot Do Not Shoot targets, such as Bombs, Civilians or the opponent's colour targets.

Reception

In Japan, it was the seventh highest-grossing dedicated arcade game of 1995. According to Electronic Gaming Monthly, Point Blank was a "cult favorite" in U.S. arcades.

The PlayStation version was the third best-selling video game in Japan for the week ending August 10, 1997.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Arcade1 December 2000Japan
PlayStation21 December 2000Japan · Europe 23 March 2001 · North America 1 May 2001

Editions and related releases

Included in
Gunvari Collection + Time Crisis

Games like this

Collections4 collections

Publishers

Genres

Platform libraries

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.