The genre of first person shooting games had very rarely catered to young kids during the 1990s. Sure there might be games like Chex Quest, or Super Noah's Ark 3-D (A kid friendly modified version of Wolfenstein 3D on the Super Nintendo) but it seemed like PC games were a go-to for the younger audience to try their hand at these types of games, and what better way than to use the Nerf brand?

Nerf Arena Blast would be one of the first online multiplayer FPS games to be in full 3D released in 1999, however playing online wasn't necessary as the game had its own story mode for offline play. There is actually a plot, aside from the mindless multiplayer fun though.

You play as a regular kid that joins a group of other Nerf players that call themselves the "Twisters" and you must compete in three different challenges, winning at the top three to progress to other arenas, going to the Championship at the very end.

The three repeated challenges are as follows:

PointBlast

PointBlast is a standard deathmatch-like mode in which you score the most knock outs, and knocking out an opposing team member has them dropping bonus points that you can get toward upping your score.

SpeedBlast

SpeedBlast will have you focusing on a race to collect numbered flags in order, sounds easy enough but the game will trick you with many other paths to figure out where the next flag will turn up. Opponents can still gun you down in an attempt to give you a hard time though, so you have to get to know the arena well.

BallBlast

In this arena, rubber balls with different score numbers are tossed about for players to grab and then shoot through a hoop and must score six points, then a gold ball appears once the sixth ball is scored. Whoever grabs the gold ball to shoot it through the hoop is determined the winner.

So now that we have the modes out of the way, what types of Nerf guns are used? They definitely should be using real ones that were sold in retail at the time, right? Well, yes and no. There are a handful of real Nerf guns that are advertised for the game, such as the Ballzooka, a rotating turret dart gun, and the Triple Strike, a gun with "Screamin' Arrows", arrow shaped darts that whistle when shot out. As for fictional guns for the game, you have guns such as the Whomper, a slow firing gun that doesn't require ammo refills, but has a limited battery use, and the Sidewinder, a disc shooting gun that ricochets ammo from walls.

The fictional Nerf gun the "Sidewinder" that shoots discs, shown here.

Item pickups are scattered through PointBlast arenas, whether it be ammo for the guns you're carrying, health pickups or power ups that give you an advantage with agility like higher jumping and faster running making battles much for intense for everyone.

After you've finished the challenges in the "Amateur" arena, you'll then be booted outside to the Nerf Plaza where you'll see the seven other arenas that you have you rise your ranks to move up to one at a time. Here you'll see that the team arenas have their own themes, for example the Orbiters team has their own space station type arena, and the Barracudas have a cave arena with water in some places. Once you make it to the Championship arena however you're really put up to the test, limited hiding spaces from cover make it the hardest one to claim victory for in PointBlast.

Overall, Nerf Arena Blast holds many memories for me as I began opening up more to PC gaming. For a game released as late as 1999 it could keep even the most pro FPS players busy with how fun it is to come back to, and yep, you can even still play online matches today, so long as you configure your PC to the right video settings and of course, setting up lobbies. It's underrated for sure, but it's got a cult following that keeps it alive.

Do you have a first person shooter that made you a fan of the genre? Leave a comment and as always, see you next article!