Collection essentials #373 & #374: Point Blank 2 (PS1) and GunCon (PS1)

If you’ve been following this series for a while you probably know that I have a soft spot for light gun games. Well, the great arcade developer Namco (responsible for Pac-Man) made a series in the mid-’90s that provided us with some of the most creative and fun light gun games ever made. The games originated in arcades, and thankfully the games got ported to the PlayStation, compatible with Namco’s own “GunCon” accessory which is slightly annoying to plug in properly but is worth the effort.

Point Blank games can be played with one or two players. Players select a difficulty and then choose from a variety of levels. These are all brief segments where you are given an objective and set of rules (time limit, number of bullets, etc) along with what is required to pass the level. If the player does not pass, they lose a heart, and losing all of them results in a game over. 

The game is pretty cartoony and provides many creative and amusing challenges to be undertaken. You’ll have to shoot a wide variety of things, such as targets, bombs, cardboard cutouts of people, animals, alien ships, and plenty more. The variety of rules helps keep things fresh. You’ll sometimes have to shoot certain targets and avoid others, sometimes you’ll have to shoot things in a certain order, or sometimes you’ll just have to shoot as fast as you possibly can to destroy something before time runs out. It’s great fun, especially with a friend. 

This PlayStation port, thankfully, adds some new modes. There are some multiplayer modes for when there are more than two people who want to play, such as one called “turf war” where people try to take over squares on a grid by scoring better than other players in the shooting levels. There’s new single-player content too, such as “Theme Park Mode” where you are trying to ascertain about a missing princess, and shooting well results in better clues, and the attractions contained within further mix up gameplay. They did a good job of making this home console port not just be a quick lazy port job from the arcade.

Point Blank 2 is a game that I enjoyed in arcades over the years. My family liked to vacation in York, Maine and the “Fun-O-Rama” arcade there had a Point Blank 2 machine (and perhaps still does). Being a fan of the genre, I definitely had to have the home port.

There are two other Point Blank games on PlayStation, and I do own them both. I suppose I could and perhaps should include them on this list, but I haven’t played these versions too much up to this point, so for now I’ve chosen to only talk about the one that I’ve played the most. 

It’s a great privilege to own these light gun games and have a proper television to play them on, since they won’t work on HDTVs. Point Blank 2 is wonderful classic light gun arcade gaming, and a very worthy essential.