Nerf Arena Blast from 1999 Refuses to Quit Even Today, Here’s Why

Jumping back into Nerf Arena Blast today provides the same adrenaline that captivated players all those years ago in 1999. People are still loading patched versions of the game onto their modern machines and connecting to active servers, where matches are quickly filling up. This game has always managed to transform what would otherwise be a bunch of kids playing with foam darts into full-fledged digital competition that still feels new 27 years later.

The guys at Visionary Media did an excellent job designing the game around Nerf gear. Every blaster in the game is an exact replica of the one you can purchase at the store. The Wildfire, for example, can just spit out darts in fast bursts, whereas the Ballzooka releases these clusters that spread all over the place when they impact, and because ammo is limited, you can bet your bottom dollar that whoever runs out will be left hanging out to dry. Throwing in some secondary fire modes, such as tighter spreads or faster reload times, adds another layer of strategy to each of those Nerf guns, so practice pays off.

Instead of simply racing around and gunning like most other arena games, Nerf Arena Blast offers three separate events to pick from. PointBlast is all about scoring hits on both your opponents and stationary targets, as well as collecting bonus tokens that appear when someone is tagged out. SpeedBlast is all about racing through colored flags in the correct order, and if you get tagged out, you get a free pass to reset your progress to the last checkpoint. Then there’s BallBlast, in which 7 random colors are scattered all over the map and players must run around grabbing these balls and shooting them into the goals, but the golden ball is the real game changer. These formats make every second of gameplay worthwhile since points matter far more than simply knocking someone out.

As you go through the single-player campaign, new arenas will unlock in phases. Early levels involve winding through tight passages and water slides inside the Amateur Arena, but later levels take you to forest platforms in Sequoia or zero-gravity chambers on an orbital station. There are power-ups everywhere to give you a momentary speed boost or a shield that renders you nearly invulnerable for a short period of time, and you’ll be relieved to hear that health pickups only go up to 200 points, putting your survival skills to the test.

The Multiplayer modes, however, are what keep Nerf Arena Blast going. Local splitscreen now works out of the box, but fan-hosted servers bring strangers together for intense team battles on dozens of custom maps created by community members. Who could have predicted that one of the fans would add capture-the-flag to the game back then? Hundreds of custom venues and game adjustments are now included in a single small community patch that simply bundles all of the repairs and improves compatibility. As it is now officially abandonware, anyone can download the original files and begin playing without the need for any old disks.

The game’s scoring system is also designed to promote some innovation. Tag someone out, and the points go to whoever finishes them off, keeping everyone in the fight until the end, and double-damage pickups are the best, since they glow orange until someone whacks the holder, after which the effect is passed on to the next person to grab it. These minor touches keep games going in a continual push-pull, with no one giving up.