Note: This is NOT a sponsored post. I'm just a happy customer. Background When the G'AIM'E Kickstarter was announced, I got the itch to play light gun games again. I grew up playing Time Crisis on...
Note: This is NOT a sponsored post. I'm just a happy customer.
Background
When the G'AIM'E Kickstarter was announced, I got the itch to play light gun games again. I grew up playing Time Crisis on my PSX, stepping on a controller plugged into port 2 which acted as a makeshift pedal so I could mimic the arcade experience. A local pizza place near me had an Area 51 machine that I could play for a quarter, and over time I memorized the enemy layouts for that game so that I could play further and further on one coin.
There are a variety of modern light gun models available now, though all of them are at the hobbyist/tinkerer level. There isn't one that "just works" smoothly and easily.
The most well known is the Sinden, which achieves calibration on games by setting up a white border around the game on the screen. This allows the gun to establish its position within that border and "know" where it's shooting.
Unfortunately, when I looked into the Sinden, it seemed like reviews were very mixed, with many mentioning that the border can be kind of a mess to get working. Apparently it can require a lot of legwork and messing around with settings and external programs and whatnot.
After searching around for alternatives, I landed upon a different line of modern light gun and decided to, well, pull the trigger.
Gun4IR Intro
Gun4IR on its own isn't a standalone product so much as it is a framework for making a modern light gun. You can buy the individual components and put them all together in a gun casing, making a functional light gun of your choosing. For example, see the User Guide which goes into detail about which boards you'll need, pin guides, etc. People have made them in Nerf cases and 3D printed ones.
Now, if I'm going to ding the Sinden for requiring too much tinkering, surely soldering wires onto PCBs is a step in the wrong direction?
That's absolutely correct! The good news is that you can sidestep all of this. Gun4IR has some official pre-build sellers, meaning you can buy an already made gun -- no soldering needed! Their site sells builds for the UK, while, RPEG Electronics is their official pre-build seller for the US.
From RPEG, I picked up a pre-built Gun4IR setup in a Guncon 2 housing.
Gun4IR Basics
As is implied by the name, Gun4IR uses 4 different IR clusters for calibration. You can buy a pack of LED sensors that plug into the USB port of your TV. You stick these, facing out, to the midpoint of the top, bottom, left, and right of your TV. The LEDs are black and their light can't be seen with the naked eye but can with a camera (you can check to make sure they're working with your phone).
The gun comes with calibration software that gives you lines on your TV to show the mount points for the LEDs, check how the gun is seeing the sensors, line up shots, etc.
I'm happy to report that, once calibrated, my gun is VERY accurate. I was honestly expecting a bit of jank, but it's genuinely spot on. There's a small bit of jitter that's noticeable when you have a crosshair on (some of that also might be coming from my unstable hands), but when you're playing a game without a crosshair, it's not enough to make you miss shots. The shots I've missed have been because I'm, well, bad at videogames.
Games
Because I wasn't wanting to tinker, I found a big download pack that promised me a pre-configured set of ROMs and emulators that were turnkey and compatible with Gun4IR. I spent days downloading all the individual parts from one of those sketchy download sites, getting all the parts of a multi-part RAR file.
And when I started extracting it, wouldn't you know, it was INFESTED with viruses. I uploaded one of the .exes to VirusTotal and I've never seen so much red.
Shame on me, though. I'm not an internet newbie, and I should know better than to trust random executable files, especially on Windows.
So, I went seeking an alternate solution.
Batocera
Batocera is a Linux distribution focused on retro-gaming. You wouldn't use it as your daily driver, but you would use it if you want to just boot into something so you can play games. Additionally, Batocera has built-in light gun support! Perfect!
I did my usual "setup emulation" dance that I've done so many times before: looking up worthwhile games to play, locating ripping ROMs, getting the right extracting BIOSes, etc. I also bought an external hard drive and attached it to my Windows TVPC. I can now boot off the hard drive to go into Batocera directly (because I didn't want to try to figure out dual booting with Windows).
Batocera is like booting into an arcade cabinet, loading right into ES-DE. It doesn't really expose its file system to you by default, but it's got a killer feature that makes setup easy: Batocera automatically sets up a network share for you. This lets you access all of its folders from another device, meaning I could set everything up on my laptop and transfer it over easily to Batocera.
Furthermore, Batocera automatically knows when you've got a light gun attached and will show a gun icon on games that are compatible. In theory, I'm able to navigate the interface just using my light gun, but in practice I also paired a bluetooth controller. (See Caveats section below for more on this.)
You don't HAVE to use Batocera of course, but it ended up being so easy that it became my preferred setup.
Gaming
So, I got the gun calibrated, and I got my games set up in Batocera. It's time to shoot!
I'm happy to report that the gun works fantastically. Like, seriously good.
For most games and emulators, it "just works" which is exactly what I wanted. I tested out several different games on several different platforms, and it worked on stuff ranging from the Atari 2600 to Naomi arcade cabinets.
I played through the first 10 rounds of Duck Hunt on the NES without missing a shot before getting bored and moving to something else. Time Crisis on the PlayStation (my original light gun love) plays wonderfully.
I had a friend over this weekend who also loves light gun games and has nostalgia for TC (though his is for TC2 and TC3). We traded off rounds playing Time Crisis 2 (which ended up being a good way to do it, as I forgot how my arms and eyes need a rest after 15 minutes of light gun gaming). We beat the full campaign in 2 and almost beat 3.
I also tried the gun out in some Windows games off of Steam, just to make sure that my Batocera success wasn't a fluke. Sure enough, it worked just fine!
I now have an accurate, easy-to-use light gun setup that works on my large, modern LCD TV. I have hours of light gun gameplay ahead of me, and I'm thrilled.
Caveats
Wow, kfwyre, this sounds great! I can't wait to get one for myself!
Easy there, cowboy/cowgirl/cowthem! Let me surface some of the rough edges, lest you think that this is too good to be true.
Price
The buy-in price was $300 for me: $250 for the gun and $50 for the IR sensors. This is NOT cheap. You have to REALLY like light gun games to make this worthwhile.
Games
Most light gun games have short campaigns and can be somewhat player-antagonistic. A lot of them are/were arcade cabinets designed to eat your quarters, so they have a lot of cheap deaths built in.
You get longevity out of them by playing them over and over and memorizing enemy patterns and levels, but this type of gaming doesn't speak to everyone, so be aware that if you're not ready for that kind of gaming, your very expensive light gun might become a very expensive paperweight sooner rather than later.
Sensors
The sensors aren't designed to come on and off of your TV, as you would have to recalibrate each time you moved them. As such, you have to be comfortable with the sensors being on your TV/monitor permanently.
If I'm being honest though, I thought permanent sensors would bother me more than they actually do. They are noticeable, especially when the TV is off, but they quickly become "invisible" in the same way that you don't notice your TV legs or the company logo. And when the TV is on you're so focused on the content you don't see them at all unless you're looking for them.
Lack of Portability
Because of the hardware sensors, you can't really have a portable setup in the way that you could with a Sinden or as promised by the G'AIM'E. I'd love to take a light gun setup with me to friends' houses or when we have our nerd weekend meetups, but this simply isn't built for that sort of thing.
Stray LEDs
The gun is susceptible to catching stray LEDs, which can throw off your inputs. It features sensitivity settings you can change in hopes of having it ignore them, but in practice I had to cover up some lights from other sources with electrical tape.
The most egregious one is that my bottom sensor sits right below the IR input for my TV, which I learned features a blinking LED that was messing up my accuracy. If I cover it up with electrical tape, I lose the ability to use a remote, so I have to take that piece of tape on and off depending on whether I'm shooting or using the TV for something else.
Windows-only Configuration
In order to calibrate the Gun4IR hardware, you have to use the included software that comes with the gun. This only runs on Windows (note: you could possibly get it running through WINE or something, but I didn't try this).
Once you calibrate the gun, you save the configuration to the gun itself, and it'll work in other environments (like Batocera), but at present there's a Windows dependency for this kind of setup.
Prebuilt Gun Quality
The US prebuilts use actual Guncon and Guncon 2 casings. These, of course, haven't been produced in a long time, so you're getting an old, used controller.
My Guncon2 has a spongy d-pad in which inputs sink in and don't return to neutral, making the d-pad unusable. This is likely an issue with my specific build rather than the Gun4IR platform as a whole, but it's worth noting that, if you're getting a pre-built, you might have some inevitable QC issues because they're being built in guns from 20 years ago.
That said, the actual Gun4IR components are rock solid so far.
Controller "Requirement"
I had dreams of controlling Batocera using only my gun, but I ended up connecting a controller as well. In part this is because it's simply easier to do things with the controller, but it's also because Gun4IR can't be configured to allow chorded inputs for its buttons, which are necessary for tasks like exiting a game. This makes the setup a little clunkier, but it's not a dealbreaker by any means.
Recoil
The gun technically has "recoil" (which, from what I can gather, is just a powerful rumble). It requires an external power supply. I don't have a plug near where I connect my gun to the computer, so I haven't tested this. It's entirely optional though, and I don't feel like I'm losing out on anything by not having it.
Accuracy
While I'm impressed with the gun's accuracy, I do lose a little bit of accuracy when I'm deep in the corners of my screen.
I haven't figured out a way around this, but it's mostly a non-issue. For one, many light gun games don't tend to put targets in the corners anyway, and, even better, most of the games I'm playing are in 4:3 anyway, so they don't even come close to the corners of my 16:9 screen in the first place
Lenses
The corner inaccuracy mentioned above might be because I'm using a fisheye lens for the gun. It came with it, though it's optional. The fisheye gives the gun a wider viewing angle, which lets it see the sensors well even when moving around and lets you get closer to the screen without losing accuracy.
I tried calibrating the gun without using the lens but I would have had to stand so far away from my TV that it would have been comical. The fisheye lens lets me stand at what I would consider the "right" distance for playing.
Finding Solutions
Being a niche product, it can be hard to find solutions online when something isn't working. The Sinden, for all the setup it requires, has a LOT of online documentation and discussions about it.
When looking for Gun4IR help, I inevitably ended up reading through stuff about the Sinden to see if it would help. There isn't a lot out there about Gun4IR specifically, so you're kind of on your own. There is a Gun4IR Discord though that might be helpful. From what I saw, the support on there is less about getting specific things running and more about people needing help with the DIY build processes.
PCSX2
While most systems "just worked", PCSX2 didn't. I have no idea if this is because of the gun, the emulator itself, Batocera, or something else entirely. Time Crisis 2 and 3 open with their own Guncon calibration screens, and I would get stuck on them. I could shoot, and the screen would flash and give me the gun sound, but it wouldn't ever calibrate and move forward.
I initially got around this by disconnecting the gun and loading the game so that it didn't pull up the calibration screen. Then I made a save state past that screen that I could load with the gun already connected. However, when I did this, the accuracy was consistently off.
I finally learned that you can map a button called "Calibration Shot" in the settings for the emulator. This is, for some reason, different from a regular shot? This now lets me pass the calibration screen and have accurate shooting.
Also, one time during Time Crisis 3 the gun seemed to get stuck in the upper right quadrant of the screen. It would still shoot, but the shots didn't line up with where we were aiming. We restarted the emulator, and the issue went away and hasn't cropped up again.
Conclusion
I am quite fond of my Gun4IR so far. It works better than I hoped it would, and it's unlocked a type of gaming that I thought was extinct. (For some reason, light gun games have a different feel to me than VR shooting gallery games. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I like them a lot more?)
I would recommend it ONLY if you're someone who knows they're going to get their money's worth out of it and are also willing to put up with the mostly minimal tinkering required to get it working. I say mostly minimal because, no matter what gun you're using, you're still going to have to set up emulators and ROMs and whatnot. The configuration that is specific to Gun4IR is really just installing the sensors, using the calibration app, and making sure your gun isn't catching other LEDs.
Compared to the G'AIM'E (which is a bit of a fool's errand at this point because that one's still theoretical while this one's here to kiss you in real life), Gun4IR doesn't offer the "plug and play" promise, but it also is compatible with far more games. If you're in the market for the G'AIM'E, however, it's probably worth waiting out that release to see how it fares (and whether people can get it working with more games besides the included ones).
On the other hand, if you're like me and need some light gun fun NOW then I give the Gun4IR a pretty strong recommendation, with a secondary recommendation for Batocera. The two of them together are really great, and I'm delighted that I have hours upon hours of shooting games ahead of me.
If anyone has any additional questions or wants me to test specific games/systems, let me know. I'm happy to report back and help in whatever way I can.