Nerf Arena Blast

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Nerf Arena Blast
US Version of the front box cover, with a player firing a Nerf "Wildfire" with the phrase "Pump It Up!" underneath, with four other players in the background.
Developer(s) Visionary Media, Inc. (now-defunct)
Publisher(s) Hasbro Interactive (now Atari, Inc.)
Designer(s) David Walls
Engine Unreal Engine
Release date(s) October 31, 1999
Genre(s) First-person shooter
Mode(s) Single player
Multiplayer (PointBlast)
Rating(s) ESRB: Teen (T) and Everyone (E) (on some boxes)
Platform(s) PC
Media CD (1)
System requirements 200 MHz Pentium
Windows 95 or higher
32 MB RAM
120 MB HDD
2 MB DirectX 6.1 compatible video card
Sound Card
4x CD-Rom Drive
Internet connection (for multiplayer)
Input Keyboard and Mouse

Nerf Arena Blast (or NAB, sometimes Arena Blast) is a first-person shooter developed by the now-defunct Visionary Media Inc. in 1999, and was touted as a "family-friendly alternative to Unreal Tournament"[1]. The game was supported by the publisher Hasbro Interactive until Hasbro Interactive gave its rights and properties over to Infogrames, which subsequently removed all references to the game from their website except for a small support page [2].

Contents

[edit] Gameplay

[edit] Singleplayer

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).

[edit] Gametypes

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 and score. Once a player gets the first six balls into the target, a seventh ball (called the "gold ball") is added to the game. The first player to get the first six balls and the seventh "gold ball" into one of the targets wins the level.

[edit] Multiplayer

Due to the similarity between Unreal Tournament and Nerf Arena Blast, it is possible to play Pointblast in team mode, due to the fact that 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, this has given rise to a large number of new maps for NAB.

[edit] Problem with the news page

Due to the lack of support from Atari, Inc., Gamespy eventually stopped updating the news page (which NAB loads in Multiplayer mode) and later altogether removed the news page, but continued to support NAB's Multiplayer abilities. As a result, trying to view the news page in NAB would result in an error message being displayed. This issue was remedied by a community created patch released in 2006.

[edit] Expandability

Due to the nature of the Unreal Engine utilized by Nerf Arena Blast, it is possible to create user-made maps and, to some extent, 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.

[edit] Community

Even though Nerf Arena Blast was discontinued by Atari, Inc. shortly after its release, most of the fan community has survived over the 7 years since its release on an Ezboard [3]. The community over the 7 year period have created several add-ons and over 600 user-made maps for the game. Notable projects by the community include porting the "Capture the Flag" (CTF) and "Instagib" game types from Unreal Tournament, by forum member "Ace"[4][5][6]; a fix to redirect the non-existent multiplayer news page to a blog-style page with the ability for players to contribute to the page, by forum member "Jay"[7][8]; a "community pack" which combines all of the community's add-ons, maps, patches, and fixes into one file, created by forum members "Jay" & "G-MO" with contributions from the entire NAB community [9] [10][11]; and a proposal to Atari, Inc. to release the game's copyrights or make it open source, that has gained the attention of the game's former creative director Dave Walls, started by forum member "walksonwalls9878" [12][13][14]. Also of note, on June 1, 2006, a new community site, NerfArena.net, was launched. This NAB site offers many community-driven features, such as downloads, news, a help section and more. However, the latest site to be added to the NAB community is the "Library". It has all the fiction ever created for nerf ArenaBlast on one site. The community has also created an automatic updater, all you have to do is run the program and it will keep your game up to date.

[edit] Sources

  1. http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/nerfarenablast/review.html Gamespot's review of Nerf Arena Blast, Dec 9, 1999, accessed Mar 5, 2006.
  2. http://www.atari.com/us/support/faq/nerfarena_pc.asp Atari, Inc.'s support page for Nerf Arena Blast, Oct 31, 1999, accessed Mar 5, 2006.
  3. http://p208.ezboard.com/bnerfarenablastforums Nerf Arena Blast community's main message board, Dec 13, 2000, accessed Mar 5, 2006.
  4. http://p208.ezboard.com/fnerfarenablastforumsfrm12.showMessage?topicID=53.topic CTF v1.0 release, Jun 13, 2003, accessed Mar 5, 2006.
  5. http://p208.ezboard.com/fnerfarenablastforumsfrm12.showMessage?topicID=54.topic CTF v2.0 release, Jul 29, 2003, accessed Mar 5, 2006.
  6. http://p208.ezboard.com/fnerfarenablastforumsfrm12.showMessage?topicID=45.topic "Instagib" porting idea and its subsequent release, Jan 4, 2002, accessed Mar 5, 2006
  7. http://p208.ezboard.com/fnerfarenablastforumsfrm1.showMessage?topicID=442.topic NAB News page fix released as part of the "community pack", Jan 4, 2006, accessed Mar 5, 2006.
  8. http://nab.d3done.com/news/ NAB Community news website (also used as the redirected Multiplayer news page in the news page fix), Dec 21, 2005, accessed Mar 5, 2006.
  9. http://nab.d3done.com/Community-Pack-README.txt Readme file for the NAB "community pack" with credits, Feb 1, 2006, accessed Mar 5, 2006.
  10. http://p208.ezboard.com/fnerfarenablastforumsfrm1.showMessage?topicID=442.topic "G-MO's" statement that the "community pack" is released, Jan 4, 2006, accessed Mar 5, 2006.
  11. http://nab.d3done.com/ The "community pack" homepage, Jan 4, 2006, accessed Mar 5, 2006.
  12. http://p208.ezboard.com/fnerfarenablastforumsfrm1.showMessage?topicID=445.topic "walksonwalls9878's" proposal to Atari games for either the release of NAB's copyright or of NAB into open source, Feb 5, 2006, accessed Mar 6, 2006.
  13. http://p208.ezboard.com/fnerfarenablastforumsfrm1.showMessage?topicID=447.topic David Walls contacts "walksonwalls9878" through email, Mar 2, 2006, accessed Mar 6, 2006.
  14. http://p208.ezboard.com/fnerfarenablastforumsfrm1.showMessage?topicID=448.topic David Walls' first post on the NAB forums, Mar 2, 2006, accessed Mar 6, 2006.

[edit] Reviews

[edit] Links

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