| Nerf Arena Blast | |
| Developer: | Visionary Media, Inc. Mondo Media (cutscenes and artwork) |
| Publisher: | Hasbro Interactive |
| Designer: | David Walls[1] |
| Engine: | Unreal Engine 1[2] |
| Genre: | First-person shooter |
| Modes: | Single-player, multiplayer |
| Platforms: | Microsoft Windows |
Nerf Arena Blast (known as Nerf Arena in Europe) is a first-person shooter developed by Visionary Media, Inc. and published by Hasbro Interactive, released under their Atari Interactive label. The game, based on Nerf, was touted as a "family-friendly version of multiplayer combat games like and Unreal Tournament",[3] and was supported by Hasbro Interactive until that company gave its rights and properties over to Infogrames. The cutscenes were animated by Mondo Media alongside them doing the in-game art.
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).[4]
Due to the similarities between Unreal Tournament and Nerf Arena Blast, it is possible to play Pointblast in team mode, because 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,[5] which has given rise to a large number of new maps for NAB.
Nerf Arena Blast used Unreal Engine and therefore supports user-made maps and 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. However, hundreds of maps and modifications of Unreal maps have been published, and multiple modified weapons and game modes (such as Capture the Flag) have been created.