Light Guns For My Cab... Help???

[shan1784]

Hey everyone,

Completed my cab late last summer and have been having a blast with it.. Even my wife loves to play World Class Bowling which when combined with Martini Slushes can make for a very interesting time  ...

So this past weekend I took my 5 year old to a local arcade to hang out for a few hours and we both fell in love with Jurassic Park The Lost World... We spent quite awhile on that. For those who don't know it's a light gun game... Well, needless to say this got me thinking, "I've gotta add this to my cab".... To my disappointment it doesn't look like MAME supports Sega Model 3 emulation as of yet and this game doesn't work very well at all...

There are others I found like Carnevil, Operation Wolf, Terminator 2, etc... I find this reason enough to add a light gun upgrade to my cab...

I've looked around and it seems like the main three would be EMS Top Gun series, Act Labs, and Aimtrak... I've read up on all of these and am embarrassed to say I still can't figure how these things work... I thought they just emulate the mouse in game as I can play these games with my mouse without any special setup it looks but they come with sensors that I have to mount above my monitor... I don't understand this...

I'm just looking for something that will work well, great accuracy, easy implementation, and looks pretty slick... I like the looks of the Top Gun series but don't really want to pull the trigger, no pun intended, until I know it will work the way I expect it to which is on par with what we played at the arcade this past weekend...

I guess what I'm hoping for from this thread is some of you experts that have done this themselves or are very knowledgeable on how this all works can make some recommendations as well as let me know what I'm in for and what to expect from the final outcome...  My cab specs are below...

27" Arcade Monitor (not sure what brand)
JPAC
PC - 3.16 Ghz Intel E8500 Dual Core CPU with 2 Gig RAM
Arcade VGA Card

[nickynooch]

I love my dual actlabs light guns.

[sarge]

Just a note....
Terminator 2 and Operation Wolf are not light gun games.  They use a positional gun to control the cursor.  I'm not sure if act or topguns can be made to support this but I know aimtraks can. 

[nickynooch]

Actlabs light guns are great!

[BadMouth]

Just a note....
Terminator 2 and Operation Wolf are not light gun games.  They use a positional gun to control the cursor.  I'm not sure if act or topguns can be made to support this but I know aimtraks can. 

Actually, Operation Wolf did use a light gun.  They just mounted it like a positional gun.

Technically they will work, but the act labs guns aren't that great for these type of games because you can't hold in on the trigger and spray bullets.
I picked up a set of used act labs guns cheap and have been extremely happy with them, but if I were starting over & paying full price, I'd go with the Aim-tracks.

Do a search.  There are lots of light gun threads.
I linked to a thorough explanation of how light guns work in one recent one.

[shan1784]

I like the idea of the actlabs simple setup and no light rails but looking at their site I don't really see any guns other than the red and blue one... Do they have more of a selection somewhere? Kinda looking for something a little more eye pleasing... Just for the "Wow" factor for my son...

@ BadMouth - I don't see the link that you referred to???

[Donkbaca]

Forget about the topguns, they have huge lightbars and you have to stand far away.

The Aimtracks are sweet, but require you to assemble the gun.  The light bar isn't a big deal at all for those, its just 4 led lights, super easy to hide.  If you don/t get the housing, you can just drill 4 little holes in your bezel for the LEDS to show through.  If you get the housing, it looks like the Wii sensor bar, only slightly shorter and slightly taller.  With the aimtraks, you can pretty much use anything for the guns, any light gun shell will pretty much work, some people have used nerf guns.. you just have to build them yourself.

Act labs will work with your set up, but if you ever go to an LCD setup, you will have to ditch them.  The Aimtraks will work on anything, even an image projected on a wall.

Act labs are more plug and play, aimtraks will give you more flexibility and customization

[BadMouth]

I like the idea of the actlabs simple setup and no light rails but looking at their site I don't really see any guns other than the red and blue one... Do they have more of a selection somewhere? Kinda looking for something a little more eye pleasing... Just for the "Wow" factor for my son...

@ BadMouth - I don't see the link that you referred to???

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=109395.0
Bottom of my 2nd post.

[shan1784]

Thanks guys... Is there somewhere that sells the housing? I know ultimarc has the one shell but is there anywhere else has more of a selection? I think I will probably go the aimtrak route here...

One other question about the aimtrak sensor, I have a 1/2 inch piece of glass covering the front of the monitor and bezel. Is this going to be a problem having this glass between the sensor and gun?

[Donkbaca]

nope, the glass won't matter

Do a forum search for aimtraks.  All your questions will be answered

[kronic24601]

Aimtracks are the way to go. If you want selection, buy any gun and mod it yourself.

I made a little tutorial on how to mount the sensor here, but I'm sure there are dozens out there.

[shan1784]

Yeah, after looking around qutie abit on this I think I will be going with the Aimtrak... I'll be buying the kit today.. I just need to figure out which gun to go with...

Any ideas on that would be great... I kinda like the look of the gun on the ultimarc site but don't really want to pay $40 + for a gun housing...

[shan1784]

I actually just bought the Namco Guncon NPC-103 gun... Seems to be poplar for the aimtrak as well as having several threads on how to modify them...

[yotsuya]

These guys posted here a few months ago:

http://www.arcadeguns.com/

They sell the gun already assembled.

[shan1784]

I saw those but not a big fan of their guns... I already ordered the aimtrak kit from unltimarc and a guncon npc-103 gun from ebay... Saved some money on it this way as well...

I like to tweak and mod things so modding up the gun will be fun for me as well... I'm thinking I want to add in some rumble packs from an xbox controller so I get some vibrations when shooting the gun...

I'll post some pics when I get going on it...