Retro|Spective 202: Arcade Lightgun Shooters

[QualityChimp]

After Time Crisis, this just felt like a step backwards.
The guns were lighter with no recoil effects and no duck option just felt like you took loads of hits.

[Atticus]

Never liked those digitised, Mega-CD looking visuals

[wakka]

I had no idea the first Lethal Enforcers was FMV based. And QC to be fair to this game it was much earlier than TC1, this was 1992 and TC didn’t arrive till 95. the thing with TC, I think, is that those games are so good precisely because the developers learned from Lethal Enforcers and Virtua Cop.

[fuse]

QC is gaming's Benjamin Button.

[teddymeow]

Elevator Action Death Parade is a brilliant lightgun game.

I like Virtua Cop 3 as well.

The Time Crisis games are good but the more recent ones have got a bit OTT.

[Neon Ignition]

I hadn't even considered this but VR headset users can use Virtual Desktop and then use the controllers as lightguns

[Colin]

House Of The Dead is responsible for one of the biggest jaw dropping moments in gaming for me. I went with a friend to some crappy computer fair thing and a stall had an import Japanese DC running and it was my first experience of seeing the system in person. On it was HOTD and having loved the ONE CREDIT I’d ever experienced on the arcade machine I was utterly blown away by the home version. I think I owned the system and game very shortly after. Would love to be able to play it at home again.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 10 - Jurassic Park
You arrive on Isla Nubar, home to the revived wonder and majesty of the dinosaur and of the iconic gates of Jurassic Park. Faced with the breadth of recreated splendour of this revived ecosystem you are tasked with the only natural course of action... gun 'em all down! It relies on joysticks rather than lightguns but the experience is in essence the same as another of Sega's arcade shooter entries. It used a motion seated cabinet and would go on to see several more entries added to the line.









Did fun find a way?

[QualityChimp]

Yeah, I played it, but it felt like one of those games where it wanted you to shovel in loads of coins to progress.
There's a sweet spot between expensive but a great experience or cheaper, but lasts longer.
This was one of those games where you died pretty fast but you just shot at an army of dinos.

Great review here:

http://retrovania-vgjunk.blogspot.com/2016/01/jurassic-park-arcade.html

[fuse]

This totally passed me by. From the videos and the links shared, I'm not sure I am that sad about it? It looks alright visually, but that music and the sound effects are really quite bad, and it does not look to be particularly well paced.

Not to... jump the gun (I'm so sorry) but they definitely got it right by the time of The Lost World though, which is total class.

[Neon Ignition]

Ended up caving and going for the relatively cheapest option of getting two non-recoil Aimtrak guns in classic arcade red and blue. The accuracy may be lower than Sinden but the cost is also half and I'm hardly going to gunning for ultimate crackshot position with the games so it will do the job better than relying on a mapped mouse etc.


Game 11 - Area 51
Midway's famous title, the game was poorly received but despite this became a huge hit in arcades. Working through the military site, you gun down enemies to try and prevent Area 51 being taken over by alien forces. The game was developed as a last ditch attempt to save Atari and was such a success it spawned sequels and helped the company towards surviving for years to come.








Good fun or bad enough to return to space?

[QualityChimp]

This was always a nope from me.

Ropey graphics and a featherweight lightgun put me off.

[wakka]

Yeah this game was bobbins.

[Nu-Eclipse]

[MENTION=345]Neon Ignition[/MENTION] Area 51 was originally published by Atari. Midway only published a chunk of the home ports, IIRC.

I played a fair bit of Area 51 BITD, obviously way more than anybody should have to. An old (and long gone) retro/import store near me had it amongst a section of coin-ops that were in the back of the shop.

Compared to its illustrious peers in the lightgun game genre, it is clearly awful. But I think that you could make a reasonable "so-bad-its-good" argument for it.

The "Troma Films" of lightgun games?

[Neon Ignition]

Game 12 - Deadstorm Pirates
From Namco, this shooter had two players taking on the roles of Eric and Leah. Both are amidst a crew seeking the pirate ship Poseidon's Breath. Using fixed guns, both players blast enemies across four levels of action with players chosing the order they want to tackle the missions. The game also made use of a steering wheel used to navigate their ship through hazards.










A game to plunder or to make walk the plank?