#ARCADE LIGHT GUN SOFTWARE#
#ARCADE LIGHT GUN TV#

Outside of Mame, things got a little more complicated. Mame also has the ability to use custom borders for games, which bakes in the border, along with some graphics from the game itself, to make everything look a little nicer. Being able to play these games again, was like a dream come true. Some individual games required their own calibration, but this was a fairly simple affair also, and I was off playing Point Blank and Time Crisis within a couple of minutes.

#ARCADE LIGHT GUN SOFTWARE#

Mame was the simplest, and just required copying an INI file from the Sinden software into the Mame folder which allowed the gun to work, and setting the gun on the controls setup in Mame was a snap. Setting up the Emulators, however, can be a bit more of a tricky affair. Setup is relatively simple, just set the size of your display, the width of the border, and away you go. Even at different distances, and even angles from the screen. As the setup just moves the mouse cursor on the screen in relation to the border, once initially setup, it’s rock solid, and just works. It’s such a simple system, it baffles the mind why this has not been thought of before, and not only is it simple, it makes calibration a thing of the past. The Sinden Light Gun (made by Andy Sinden, I see what he did there) uses what amounts to a seriously simple solution to making the gun work on modern displays, By simply showing a white border around the game you are playing, and using a camera in the gun to detect this rectangle, and place the mouse cursor appropriately. It does kick with a satisfying sound however. My version also has the built in recoil function, which by god, is strong by default, and required me to turn it down somewhat, as it was making my wrist ache in a matter of minutes. It also features one button dedicated to show/hide the border.

Outside of the trigger, there is a pump action slider, 4 buttons, and a D-pad, which can be set in the software to do any Mouse or Keyboard keypress you would like, and by default, are set to Mame Standard buttons (for Coin and Start etc). The Sinden Light Gun looks much like a Guncon controller, with a few more buttons. Barring the Wii and PS3, which used more modern, if not totally accurate, tech for light gun games, the Death of my CRT TV, put an end to my enjoyment of light gun games for many years. Duck Hunt and Safari Hunt were among my favourites at the time, and I kept up my love going forward, with Time crisis and Point blank on the PS1, Virtua Cop 1+2 on the Saturn, all the way to House of the Dead overkill on the Wii and PS3, using the Wiimote and Move controllers respectively. I have always been a fan of light gun games, going all the way back to the Zapper on the NES, and the Master System Light Phaser.

#ARCADE LIGHT GUN TV#

Light-Gun fans rejoice, while almost every early light-gun no longer works due to changes in TV technology, the Sinden Lightgun is a great replacement that’s easy to set up and feature-rich.

Arcade light gun