You can't look down the sights of a Wiimote or the Wii "Zapper" and expect precision-and that's exactly why most Wii light gun games include an on-screen aiming reticule at all times. Meanwhile, the Wii's infrared sensing bar, which powered a number of satisfying arcade shooter games in the '00s, has a huge caveat: it delivers relative aim, not precise. Thus, neither had to measure flashes as rendered on a CRT and could conceivably work on modern monitors, but neither is cost-effective or convenient to swoop in as a 2021 solution. Terminator 2: The Arcade Game relied on a potentiometer (pages 2-12 and 2-13) to measure the precise angle that a bolted-down gun was aimed and send X/Y data to the game accordingly, while many Sega arcade games used the "Type II" gun system with a Wii-like array of infrared bulbs. Some arcade light-gun systems released after 1985's Zapper used different methods. That's why they don't work on modern TVs like LCDs and OLEDs. Take away the specific refresh rate and pattern of a CRT, and you take away these light guns' working methodology. In the Zapper's case, a CRT's left-to-right refresh directionality could be interpreted to more precisely define where the Zapper is being aimed at a certain moment, though this method wasn't necessarily used in NES games. This method of light-flash recognition relies on the specific refresh speed and direction of cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs. (In other words, pointing at a bright light or piece of paper and pulling the trigger won't work.) Whichever millisecond it notices the flash, that corresponds to whichever duck or target is blinking on the screen. At this point, a simple binary light sensor inside the toy gun looks for a bright off-on-off flash, quicker than your eye can perceive. This black-out lasts for a few "frames" of screen refresh and triggers a brief wave of bright-white boxes flashing from left to right. Many arcade guns worked like the Zapper, as well: by blacking out the gameplay screen whenever you pull the gun's trigger. Nintendo's Zapper is the best-known example of a light gun and the one you're most likely to have lying around in a pile of home-console controllers and peripherals. Let's start with the question I've gotten a lot while casually mentioning the Sinden to friends: "Why doesn't the old NES Zapper work on modern TVs?" Older options: Flashing boxes, fixed potentiometers
Just don't go into this PC-exclusive hardware experiment expecting plug-and-play simplicity. In great news, the gun works, and it rocks. After wondering how such a system works in practice (and increasingly wanting a retro-arcade experience in my locked-down home), I finally got my hands on the Sinden this week, provided by its namesake creator, British engineer Andy Sinden.
But one enterprising Indiegogo project from 2019, the Sinden Lightgun, set its sights on solving the problem in a roundabout, DIY way: with a new plastic gun, starting at $110, that combines an RGB sensor with incredibly low-latency response times. Until recently, the wisdom preventing such a launch has been limitations with modern HDTVs light gun games were largely coded for older screen technologies. Nintendo never packed shooting-gallery classics like Duck Hunt into a plug-and-play Zapper, while companies like Sega and Namco have never released their legendary arcade gun games as convenient, shoot-at-the-TV collector's editions. Yet somehow, one massive retro-gaming category has been left unmined for a nostalgic buck: the light gun genre. Over the past decade, we've seen nearly every classic gaming console receive a cute, miniaturized re-release-and the variety has been staggering, from titans like the NES to arcade niche favorites like Neo Geo and Sega Astro City.
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