Light guns have truly returned

[Dark Jaguar]

Behold, a replacement for light guns made for modern displays.  Instead of line scanning (super accurate, only works with older TVs that instantly display every pixel the moment they get it, meaning most CRTs except that last run that had post processing effects), or IR bars (sluggish, not at all accurate if you move around, or across different screen sizes, meaning the cursor on the screen is a must), it simply uses a high speed camera and modern processing to recognize a border around the image, and calculate where you are aiming based on that.  It works incredibly accurately, even with modern display latency.  I would love for this to be adopted as the new standard.  In fact, there's good reason for console makers to go that way, as it minimizes the need for additional hardware to the light gun itself, and economies of scale make those digital cameras far cheaper than they used to be.

[A Black Falcon]

That's really, really cool, apart from the part where it only works with emulation. I know that getting something like that working with real hardware will be very difficult, but it'd be awesome to see, CRTs won't be around forever...

On the note of cursors, though, I like that the Genesis version of T2: The Arcade Game keeps a cursor on screen even when you're playing with the Menacer. It makes using it easier than if there was no sight on screen, that's for sure.

[Dark Jaguar]

It really does depend on the game. In some games, part of the challenge is that you need to aim down the sight of the gun in a realistic manner. Now, that just doesn't work with "sensor bar" style light guns, so those go out the window. This brings them back, which is what I'm excited about.

Namely, I want NEW light gun games with the accuracy of the old system. We're never getting Point Blank 4, because Konami is... well basically dead, but we may get other new things.

[A Black Falcon]

Hey look, this tech is now in something else... the Polymega, that somewhat questionable upcoming emulation box with expensive real-cartridge adapters for various classic consoles: https://www.polymega.com/2019/06/05/light-gun/

[Dark Jaguar]

I've never been a fan of emulation boxes. I already have one of those after all, it's called a PC. Still, seeing this tech get more widely adopted is a plus.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, really the only interesting things about Polymega are the fact that it plays real game cartridges, though this requires not-cheap addons to an already expensive emulation box, and that as a result it'd surely let you do things like back up saves on game carts for those supported cart-based platforms. Other than that, yeah, I have a PC, and there are better ways than an expensive box to play those games emulated on a television.

This brings up a slightly related issue, though -- very powerful addon chips for new games on classic platforms. Like, a lot of recent Atari 2600 homebrew games use powerful chips in the cart to go far, far beyond the capabilities of an actual 2600. Galaga 2600 looks amazing! ... because it uses a chip that'd be totally, completely impossible in the '80s. You can play Super Mario World on NES, the SNES version! ... with a cart that basically uses a powerful modern chip (often a Rasberry Pi or such, in these classic-modern things) to throw the SNES game on to the NES's visual output. How 'legitimate' a classic-system game is it when you're basically completely cheating like this? Sure, developers are still limited by some restrictions from the original hardware, in video display output limitations and such, as you can see in that NES Super Mario World video if you look it up, but these are not "real" classic games, on in a "could this have existed on the system then" sense. I kind of think of this as the classic-system counterpart for games like Shovel Knight that take inspiration from classic-console games (in that case the NES), but do not stick to classic limitations, like how Shovel Knight has parallax scrolling, more colors, etc. I think that I'd say these people are not making "real" classic games.

Some other uses of Pis and such make more sense, such as the Dreamcast accessory that uses a Pi to make a multiplayer modem server emulator that can get you playing a bunch of online Dreamcast games again, against other people with the setup. That is doing something not otherwise possible anymore, but it's just emulating something which existed then, not making up some new thing that could never have existed on the original format. This light-gun emulation gun is in the second category, and like DC online preservation is pretty cool.

My main position here is, as I've said before I know, I understand being frustrated by the limitations of classic platforms, but isn't dealing with those limitations the whole point of making a thing for a real classic console, and not a Shovel Knight or such?

[Dark Jaguar]

One small aside, Metal Storm on NES uses parallax scrolling. It's done via software because the hardware doesn't have a special mode for it, but it's there.