Blender 2.7x use to have a material type called, Halo, which is now depreciated due to vertex shaders not being supported in both EEVEE or Cycles engines.
I believe you can use Geomtry Nodes now however to substitute/replicate the old material type’s usage.
You can also use old fashion method of using Collection Instances (formerly named group instances) to duplicate instance a mesh at every vertex points of a separate object.
Useful for objects such as a pin cushion with needles sticking out of it.
Side note, moved this thread from Python Support to Basics & Interface, as it doesn’t seem to be related to Python.