At the start of each day, a map of Paperboy's route is displayed to indicate subscriber and non-subscriber houses. As a non-subscriber, this house now presents more targets at which to throw newspapers for building up the Breakage Bonus. If Paperboy loses a customer, that customer's house will be dark coloured the next day. The total Breakage Bonus is awarded to the player at the end of each day (or at the end of the game-whichever comes first). Hitting these targets earns points for the 'Breakage Bonus', which is displayed at the top center of the screen. Non-customers' houses and yards are loaded with targets at which to throw your extra papers (windows, lamps, statues, etc.). However, on any day in which all customers have their papers successfully delivered, one of the non-customers will re-subscribe. Losing all ten of Paperboy's customers will get him fired and the game is over. Any damage done to a customer's property also results in the loss of that customer. Failure to deliver a paper to a customer results in the loss of that customer for the next day. To deliver to a customer, the player must throw a paper either into the customer's mailbox, or onto their front porch.

Paperboy's customers live in the brightly coloured houses, while non-customers live in dark coloured houses. Each game begins with ten customers and ten non-customers.

Paperboy is a one or two-player game in which the objective is to deliver Newspapers to the Paperboy's customers from Monday through to Sunday.

Paperboy arcade game art