
Running into any of the obstacles with the bike results in the loss of a life. For example, the breakdancer and some men brawling in the street can be "smacked" with a newspaper for extra points.

Some obstacles can earn the player bonus points. The player must also cross street intersections successfully (which gets harder each day). Some obstacles include everyday nuisances such as bees, fire hydrants, storm drains, break dancers, cars, skateboarders, drunks, and kids playing with radio controlled toys and even rather bizarre foes such as a tornado, oversized house cats, and even the Grim Reaper himself. The player must stay alive by avoiding obstacles that appear along the street. In more advanced rounds, the homeowner may immediately run after the Paperboy after the house was vandalized. Accidentally damaging a customer's home or failing to deliver a paper causes the customer to cancel his subscription and may cause him to set traps for the paperboy the next day. Delivering a newspaper directly into the customer's newspaper box (or mailbox, as the voiceover calls it) earns bonus points. While the player may deliver more than one paper to each customer, they have to avoid accidentally damaging their homes, such as by throwing a paper through a closed window. Keeping subscribers is fairly straightforward: the player must deliver a paper to them. Secondary objectives include vandalizing non-subscribers' homes and hitting nuisances with newspapers. The primary objectives of the game are to keep as many subscribers as possible and to stay alive.

In Paperboy, the player attempts to deliver newspapers to subscribers along a suburban street. Points are multiplied x2 for playing 'Middle Road', and x3 for playing 'Hard Way'. If the paper is delivered to the subscriber's doorstep, the player receives 100 points. For each paper that is delivered to a subscriber's mailbox, the player receives 250 points. Should he slow down or stop for more than a few seconds, bees will appear (arcade version only). The player can control the paperboy's speed, but the paperboy is in constant movement and cannot stop moving forward until the level (day of the week) has ended. The paperboy begins his route at the start of the street (bottom of the screen) and progresses towards the end. Subscribers and non-subscribers' homes are also easy to discern in the level itself, with subscribers living in brightly coloured houses, and non-subscribers living in dark houses. Each day begins by showing an overview of the street indicating subscribers and non-subscribers.

The game lasts for seven in-game days, Monday through Sunday.Ĭontrolling the paperboy with the handlebar controls, the player attempts to deliver newspapers to subscribers.

The object of the game is to perfectly deliver papers to subscribers for an entire week and avoid crashing (which counts as one of the player's lives) before the week ends. The game begins with a choice of difficulty levels: Easy Street, Middle Road and Hard Way. Subscribers are lost by missing a delivery or damaging a subscriber's house. The player attempts to deliver a week of daily newspapers to subscribing customers, attempts to vandalize non-subscribers' homes and must avoid hazards along the street. The player controls a paperboy on a bicycle delivering newspapers along a suburban street which is displayed in a cabinet perspective view.
