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Post by Ex on Mar 31, 2021 20:51:30 GMT -5
I think it's true enough in that sense, along with Bayou Billy. But there's only one way I'd ever replay the latter.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 31, 2021 21:00:13 GMT -5
Ha. Hahahaha. Ha. Yeah, I get it. Don't think I'll ever be making another legit run at that game again, either. Mad City is so much more enjoyable. Funnily enough, it's the vehicle stages that always got me - they are brutal in the US release.
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Post by toei on Apr 1, 2021 0:25:45 GMT -5
I liked Duck Hunt and all as a kid, but in my mind the "real" light gun games began with Lethal Enforcers, and continued with Virtua Cop, House of the Dead, etc. I did play a fair amount of Virtua Cop with the controller, but it was always an obvious handicap; the cursor didn't move quite fast enough, and wasn't as easy to aim.
BTW, the Light Phaser came out in late '86 in North America, while Zillion aired about 6 months later in '87. Sega got involved in the series primarily to promote a line of laser tag-style toy guns they were selling in Japan, which used the same design as the Phaser, and was rebranded as a Zillion toy. Then, you known, synergy being a thing, they got Opa-Opa from Fantasy Zone (then one of their most popular games) in the show, and made Zillion games for the Master System. This is what is known in Japan as a "media mix" project, like Sweet Home. People never seem to know whether the game was based on the movie or the other way around; the truth is they were developed simultaneously as part of a joint project.
From the Japanese wikipedia entry on Zillion:
"This is a promotional program for the toy "Ultra High Speed Ray Gun Zillion" released by Sega Enterprises.
Sega's ray gun was on sale before the start of "Zillion", but the package and product name have been changed to coincide with the start of the program. In addition to the design of the receiving sensor attached to the gun and chest, the weaknesses of the strobe-type ray gun, such as the inability to fire continuously and the short battery life, are also utilized in the production of the animation work. In the case of a major model change of the Zillion ray gun during the program airing period, an episode appeared in which the gun was remade to make it a new Zillion in response to this in the animation."
Pretty wild, huh? The cool part to me is that it's actually a good anime, anyway. The wikipedia entry goes on to say that Zillion was awarded second best anime of the year by readers' votes in a popular anime magazine (first place was Saint Seiya), and won in various categories (including fan favorite show) at another event called the Japan Anime Award.
Oh, and this is interesting, too: "in addition, although only a few episodes, Mamoru Oshii is said to have participated in this work under the pseudonym " Rei Maruwa " at the request of his colleague Nishikubo during the Tatsunoko Production era. Production IG began producing theatrical anime works by Mamoru Oshii because of this work."
This is great to read because the show always seems to be described as some forgotten middling '80s anime on English-language sites, and I felt it was way better than that. Apparently Japan agreed.
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Post by Ex on Apr 1, 2021 0:41:43 GMT -5
toeiThanks for more detailed information on the Zillion Laser / SEGA Light Gun intermingling. I agree that Red Photon Zillion is a great anime as well. It has my all time favorite anime opening: Mainly for the beautiful title song "Pure Stone", but I love the hand drawn animation and earthen tone aesthetic too. Edit: Also Apple was my first "anime crush", at age 8 no less. I've been a hopeless weeb for a long damn time guys...
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Post by toei on Apr 1, 2021 17:45:51 GMT -5
You would think light gun games is a genre where there wouldn't be any language barrier issues, but there's an exception. There were a few Golgo 13 arcade games made in '99 and the early '00s that are not only somewhat story heavy, but generally play completely opposite to every other light gun game, in that true to the source material, you only have one shot to make per mission. Basically, the game consists of a ton of short missions. First, you watch a cutscene that uses panels from the manga to tell the story in highly-condensed form, then you make the elite shot that Golgo had to make in the manga. Maybe you have to shoot someone in the head through a moving helicopter's window, or shoot off a wire that will cause some machinery to malfunction or someone to die. You make you shot, very carefully, and you move on to the next mission. You only get a few shots, and you're rated on your accuracy. The arcade machines were actually fitted with a sniper rifle replica, of course, rather than a handgun or machinegun.
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Post by Sarge on Apr 2, 2021 18:36:26 GMT -5
Well nuts, my Light Phaser is out of alignment, apparently.
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Post by toei on Apr 2, 2021 19:00:15 GMT -5
I ran through the arcade versions of Lethal Enforcers and Lethal Enforcers II. I had some trouble getting set up - the mouse option wasn't working initially, so I tried playing with controllers. It was impossible in MAME - you'd lightly touch the D-Pad and the target would fly to the end of the screen - so I tried the Genesis ports. They're incredibly grainy - these games use digitized actors and photographs for backgrounds, if anyone is unfamiliar -, and using the pad sucks; it's too slow and too finicky to get anywhere. Finally I realized that the issue with MAME is that it doesn't recognize my laptop's "mouse" touchpad; once I plugged in a real mouse, I was finally able to get it to work (if anyone's having trouble setting it up, holla). It might not be as fun as playing with a real light gun, but it's much, much more playable that way than with a controller, and I got somewhat into it. My biggest issue is with reloading. With the arcade game, you're supposed to shoot offscreen; on MAME, aiming at the very top or bottom of the screen works, but it's not *quite* as reliable as I'd like, and I tend to mess it up during boss fights.
Anyway, those are both pretty good games. Y'all might remember that the original Lethal Enforcers attracted some controversy at the time because it had you shooting at digitized actors, and the Justifier was shaped like an actual revolver rather than some weird sci-fi toy. I think that's probably why they went with a slightly goofy Western setting for the sequel, rather than a modern urban setting. Either way, the second has a bit more action, more objects to shoot (like bottles and glasses in saloons) that sometimes reveal weapon upgrades, and more clever level design, so it all makes up for it. On the other hand, innocent people are harder to identify this time cause they're often cowboys too. The music in both games is good; the first has that aggressively '90s Konami sound that you find in Turtles in Time, while the second is pure Western movie soundtrack. Unfortunately, the second has quite a few bugs in MAME, mostly visual. It gets pretty bad in some of the later levels.
After looking into early games in the genre yesterday, it seems to me that there were 3 big waves or styles of light gun games. Early ones are usually simple gallery shooters, where each level is a fixed screen. These are often cartoony and lighthearted in style. Those are quite common on consoles like the NES, with the most famous example being Duck Hunt (1984). Then in 1987, Taito scores a big hit in the arcades with Operation Wolf. For several years after that, almost all the big arcade light gun games follow its example; the screen is always scrolling (usually to the left or right), you are continuously swarmed by enemies, and your weapon is usually a machine gun with infinite bullets. There are quite a few of these games; the last big one is probably Sega's own Alien 3 arcade game in 1993. The third wave is the 3D light gun shooters that repopularized the genre in the '90s: Virtua Cop, Time Crisis, House of the Dead. And while not 3D, Lethal Enforcers is the precursor of that wave. I played a lot of Virtua Cop as a kid, and the influence is unmistakable.
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Post by Ex on Apr 2, 2021 22:20:03 GMT -5
toeiI agree with your "three waves" theory, though I'd add a fourth in there, which would wedge between the 2D scrolling ones and the 3D polygonal graphic ones; FMV shooters. There were quite a few light gun shooters that used FMV extensively. Some were static screen, some had moving backgrounds, some had branching paths. A lot of variation in design, but the key commonality was the FMV aesthetic.
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Post by toei on Apr 2, 2021 23:00:23 GMT -5
toei I agree with your "three waves" theory, though I'd add a fourth in there, which would wedge between the 2D scrolling ones and the 3D polygonal graphic ones; FMV shooters. There were quite a few light gun shooters that used FMV extensively. Some were static screen, some had moving backgrounds, some had branching paths. A lot of variation in design, but the key commonality was the FMV aesthetic. Oh, you're right. I came across a bunch of those, but I kind of dismissed them out of hand just because they were FMV games. But they're definitely their own category. I did a run of Virtua Cop using Model 2 Emulator. Again, lots of tinkering required. I couldn't get the target to act right until I came across this tutorial: If you're going to use that emulator for light gun games, this is a required watch. The irony is the game itself is really short, with only 3 missions; I might have spent as long trying to calibrate the mousegun. I owned it on Saturn at the time, and I always wished it had 1 or 2 more. Aside from the 3d graphics, the big innovation compared to Lethal Enforcers is how much both the character and the camera move around the level, yet you still stop in places to handle a bunch of enemies now and then; it basically merges the "on-rails" and "shooting gallery" aspects into a more cinematic whole. This doesn't amount to a bunch of dialogue-heavy cutscenes, of course; it's only interested in the action set pieces, like Sega's own Die Hard Arcade. I don't know if it's because I played it so much as a kid, but the first two missions seem too easy. I didn't even get shot once during the 2nd boss battle. I'm surprised by how much all of it was still basically burned into my memories. I haven't touched it at least 20 years, but it might as well be 3 months. It didn't even feel nostalgic, just like "oh yeah, there's a magnum in that barrel, and then a bunch of guys pop out here"... I had forgotten the final boss was basically The Kingpin from the Marvel comics, but it all came back when I saw him. I didn't own VC2, though, and I only played it a bit through emulation, so that one's going to feel fresher. I'll probably do the first House of the Dead, and the first Time Crisis. After that I'll see what's within the realm of emulation and what's not. I messed a tiny bit with Gangster Town on Master System yesterday. It seems pretty ambitious for a console original, but it's actually the hardest light gun shooter I've tried so far. There are tons of enemies, so I can really feel the mouse's limits as a peripheral with that one.
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Post by paulofthewest on Apr 3, 2021 8:31:28 GMT -5
Guess what I found in my closet... a Nintendo Zapper. Played some Duck Hunt. Was doing well until Round 12, and I proceeded to miss a ton of ducks for some reason. Score was 261,700. Guess that's a "beat". Clay Shooting - Round 21, 530,000. Can't miss anything at that round. Time to go double ducks! Two Ducks - Round 15, 232,000. Could only miss one at that point, and I missed three. Doh. Lots of non-perfect rounds, which suppressed my score. I took out my zapper as well and stood back as far as the cord could go: Duck Hunt (1 duck, real hardware, 32" Trinitron): 498,300. I know when I last play (o so many years ago) I didn't know how to hold a handgun so I had just stayed right up on the screen. All that handgun training since then has obviously paid off--especially with these kids running around.
My arms got pretty tired, so I'll do two-duck and clay later.
I have a pair of these I've been meaning to try out. Mechanically it is the similar to the light gun (just the light going from gun to console instead of console to gun), but I think it still fits.
On that note, while not a complete light-gun game, I highly recommend Resident Evil 4 for the Wii. The integration of the wii-mote was very smooth.
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