Why did the developers forget about Lightguns?

For as long as there have been video games, players have been shooting things – but, we all love shooting like that
anyway, so where did the games go lightgun ?

Already in the 80s they were a real must for home consoles, thanks to the conversions of various titles from arcades.

In the early 90s, I remember being amazed playing Duck Hunt for the first time. I was at a friend's house, and an NES looked as exotic as the WWF on Italia Uno commented by Dan Peterson. Era DuckHunt and not the more famous Mario or Zelda. With the Zapper in hand it was pure arcade-style fun, even before any of us knew what dopamine was.

With the arcade port of Operation Wolf , from the ducks, came the chance to shoot terrorist commandos that Hollywood was so fond of in those days.

Meanwhile the Master System he threw his Light Phaser and as home games became mainstream, light pistols also became established. When Sega vs Nintendo became a lifestyle choice, Messi vs Ronaldo style, the SNES had the SuperScope and the Mega Drive had the Menacer .
Both upped the ante at least in terms of size, the choice of the bazooka in both cases, was inspired by the growing popularity of this weapon in action films of the late 1980s.

Lightweight pistols became official peripherals and an integral part of the home console ecosystem. Games began to come bundled with specific light guns. The various versions of Lethal Enforcers for example they had the Justifier a lightgun inspired by the Colt-Python pistol, at a very high price (even today it can be found on eBay in a boxed version for around 200 Euros.

But the glory days of small arms came in the late 1990s. With the market launch of Playstation And Saturn , there were a lot of arcade ports. From Point Blank to Virtua Cop , from Time Crisis to House of the Dead.

Players could finally have a true arcade experience at home, often with game-specific guns like the Namco GunCon and Sega Virtua Gun. Lightweight pistols remained a staple throughout the next generation Sega Dreamcast , Nintendo Wii , Xbox And PS 3, but then empty.

Now, if you want to play a Time Crisis 5 – the latest edition of the shooter released way back in 2015 – you can only do it in an arcade, assuming there are still any in your area, but I doubt it.

This is the first time Time Crisis hasn't released on a console and arcades are hosting on-rails shooters like House of the Dead: Scarlet Daw n released in 2018, Alien Armageddon , Terminator Salvation and many others coming out (orgasmic games for the eyes and recently successfully tested on the Nemesis Promax).

The limelight went out about a decade ago, when several factors combined to make it seem like the demand for console lightgun games was no longer there. But the question is there, other than...

For example, first-person shooters are dominant and most VR rooms that in fact offer several gun games.

Yet, there was a time when technology had moved forward. Classic IR guns like the Nintendo Zapper only worked on CRT TVs and not LED/OLED HD TVs, but they did it well and best of all they were plug n play.

Light weapons technology has reached another step with the success on Indiegogo and subsequently Kickstarter of the Sinden Lightgun,
which raised over 2 million Euros and received enthusiastic reviews.

But plug and play is still far away. The Sinden offers backwards compatibility for PS2 (via a Raspberry Pi) or plays emulators on a PC. Sinden also worked on a gun with Polymega, which makes sleek modern consoles for playing vintage games, but you still need original copies of those games.

It's beautiful, but also a bit (pass me the term) bullshit. A player's life in 2022 should be easier than this.

There are many arcade shooters waiting to be converted while there are parts of Call of Duty Vanguard that make you think about how cool it would be to play with a light gun.

Duck Hunt was great, and this was on TVs that were often deeper than the screens were wide. Imagine today what it would be like to shoot zombies with a PS5 or Xbox series x on a huge modern television.

It would be a fantastic commercial operation to bring revised classics onto new platforms, perhaps with dedicated guns at a time when the world of video games is in difficulty, devoid of originality and in a regressive phase. The light guns they offer undemanding, direct fun, an arcade experience suitable for home use. For the rebirth of light weapons, we at retrogamestation.it , in our small way, we try to make a contribution with our kit , focusing on these main aspects: precision, plug and play calibration, multi-platform compatibility and support for every type of screen, from cathode ray tubes to OLEDs, including projectors. The results are excellent, so we will continue on this path trying to improve more and more in the name of this common passion! If you want to try, here is a fantastic coupon for you k2j5kzgt