A new $ 110 light gun for the old Duck Hunts: Ars tests an HDTV-compatible option

Over the past decade, we’ve seen almost every classic game console receive a cute miniaturized reissue – and the variety has been impressive, from titans like the NES to niche arcade favorites like Neo Geo and Sega Astro City.

However, somehow, a huge category of retro-gaming has not been undermined by nostalgic money: the small arms genre. Nintendo never brought classics from the shooting gallery like Duck Hunt in a plug-and-play Zapper, while companies like Sega and Namco have never released their legendary weapon arcade games as convenient collector’s editions to shoot on TV.

Until recently, the wisdom that has prevented this release has been the limitations of modern HDTVs; small arms games have been widely coded for older screen technologies. But an entrepreneurial project from Indiegogo 2019, Sinden Lightgun, sought to solve the problem in an indirect way, do it yourself: with a new plastic gun, starting at US $ 110, which combines an RGB sensor with response times of incredibly low latency. After wondering how this system works in practice (and increasingly wanting a retro-arcade experience in my gated home), I finally got my hands on Sinden this week, provided by its namesake creator, British engineer Andy Sinden.

In the good news, the gun works and swings. Just don’t go into this exclusive PC hardware experiment expecting plug-and-play simplicity.

Older options: flashing boxes, fixed potentiometers

Let’s start with the question I get asked several times when casually mentioning Sinden to friends: “Why doesn’t the old NES Zapper work on modern TVs?”

Nintendo’s Zapper is the best-known example of a light weapon, and the one you’ll likely find in a stack of home console controllers and peripherals. Many arcade weapons also functioned like the Zapper: darkening the game screen whenever you pulled the trigger. This black-out lasts a few “frames” of updating the screen and fires a brief wave of bright white boxes flashing from left to right. At that point, a simple binary light sensor inside the toy gun looks for a bright flash on-off, faster than your eye can see. The millisecond in which it detects the flash, this corresponds to any duck or target that is flashing on the screen. (In other words, pointing at a bright light or piece of paper and pulling the trigger will not work.)

This flash light recognition method depends on the specific update speed and direction of cathode ray tube (CRT) TVs. In the case of Zapper, the update directionality from left to right of a CRT could be interpreted to define more precisely where the Zapper is being pointed at at any given time, although this method was not necessarily used in NES games. Remove the specific refresh rate and standard for a CRT, and you remove the working methodology for these light weapons. That’s why they don’t work on modern TVs like LCDs and OLEDs.

Some arcade light weapon systems launched after the 1985 Zapper used different methods. Terminator 2: The Arcade Game relied on a potentiometer (pages 2-12 and 2-13) to measure the precise angle at which a bolted gun was aimed and send X / Y data to the game accordingly, while many Sega arcade games used the “Type” weapon II “system with a set of infrared lamps similar to the Wii. Therefore, neither had to measure the flashes rendered on a CRT and could work on modern monitors, but neither is economical or convenient to be a 2021 solution.

Meanwhile, the Wii’s infrared detection bar, which fueled a number of satisfying arcade shooting games in the 2000s, has one major caveat: it offers relative, unnecessary aiming. You can’t look at the scope of a Wiimote or Wii “Zapper” and expect accuracy – which is exactly why most Wii light weapons games include a crosshair on the screen all the time. (In addition, this requires connecting a wired infrared sensor bar to your TV, which is not everyone’s taste in the home theater.)

Connected, ready to shoot

As a targeting peripheral for modern TVs, the Sinden Lightgun is simpler than some older options – but that’s a low obstacle to overcome, and it’s certainly not a weapon of the Nintendo caliber, it just works.

The first restriction is that this is mainly a PC peripheral. Therefore, you cannot connect this weapon’s Type-A USB port to an Xbox or PlayStation and expect it to work. But Linux works with Sinden, as does the Raspberry Pi platform, so if you’re the type of player who normally dumps his retro collection on a device outside the Windows ecosystem, you’re in luck. (However, I only tested on Windows 10, so I can’t talk about how your favorite distro will react to Sinden.)

Sinden is there with Namco Time Crisis weapons in terms of construction and weight.

The physical configuration of Sinden is the simplest part, as it is an all-in-one weapon. Connect the cable’s USB Type A port to a compatible device and you’re ready to go – no need for an infrared sensor bar or other accessories. If your ideal retro game room is particularly large, that’s fine: the cable from Sinden is over 15 feet in length. If the cable has a problem, however, you will need to remove the Philips head screws from Sinden and tamper with its internal components, as the other end of the cable is embedded in the bowels of the gun.

In terms of physicality, the 1.21 pound Sinden is there with the Namco classic Time Crisis weapons in terms of construction and weight. In particular, the trigger action is satisfactory and the grip includes a welcome plastic groove for adult fingers to press on. But this weapon does not include counterfeit weapon material like metal or leather – which is appropriate for an arcade, of course, but it’s worth noting that your $ 110 minimum purchase, before shipping and other expenses, is not going to cutting-edge construction quality. Some of his aesthetic flourishes are tinted with the kind of plastic shade you’ll find in state-of-the-art 3D printed filaments, but on the other hand, he has a smart versatile style, looks solid in his hand and shouts “90s arcade” from all the ways that I appreciate.

After connecting Lightgun, download the Sinden software package and start it. This software is necessary to activate and identify the main component of Sinden: its RGB sensor of 480p, 60 fps (in other words, a webcam). Before doing this, the software will also ask you to call a Sinden server and check for a hardware firmware update, then select the menus to confirm the exact size of your TV or monitor. According to the Sinden documentation, this real-life measurement is combined with the weapon’s ability to estimate your distance from the TV for a more accurate estimate of where you are aiming.

Put a cap on that ass … ignition

The last crucial step before turning on Sinden’s webcam is to enable the ecosystem’s secret sauce: a white border overlay that fills the visible edge of your desktop. The Sinden Lightgun webcam then translates any bright white box outline you see into a crosshair, proven by a viewing screen where your monitor becomes a light blue box. At this point, the weapon becomes a mouse pointer with a variety of built-in keyboard and mouse buttons. Yes, he’s faking it like a standard mouse – but, you know, with a built-in gun trigger and bomb action.

Before starting any game, I tested Sinden by enabling the white border (which can be activated or deactivated with a button embedded in the side of Sinden) and clicking my trigger as the left mouse button. For sure, Windows treated it as a mouse device and highly responsive. Even when I had a huge white background window filling my desktop, it worked well, and any input delay may be inherent in translating data from Sinden’s webcam it seemed tiny – no doubt slower than a light-dependent pistol. CRT, but as I already explained, these weapons must inherently contain some frames to confirm what you’re shooting at, so the comparison can be a failure.

Even with ideal lighting, Sinden’s pointer on the screen is usually a little shaky, twitching a little, and this is arguably the reflex of holding a toy gun in hand. It is enough to make it a little painful to click on perfect elements of the Windows desktop, but not enough to make me lose considerable targets in an arcade shooter. I adjusted the anti-jitter compensation sliders in the Sinden software, but that was never enough to make me want to use the gun like, say, a normal computer mouse. I didn’t feel like rolling hard on my desk and opening the covers to get the worksheet cells.

Without ideal lighting, however, Sinden’s usefulness may vary. I struggled to get it to work on a 24 “monitor on a table in the middle of a well-lit room, even after using Sinden software to modify the white border and add a black border around it to better establish the contrast. My TV 55 “, installed directly against a wall, has worked better consistently. Think about how the Nintendo Wii’s sensor bar could be complicated in well-lit rooms and evaluate your game room’s Sinden compatibility accordingly.