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| <News> - Dawn of the Light Gun |
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| saint:
Quick - when was the first light gun game made? |
| RandyT:
These guys seem a bit confused. They are mixing apples and watermelons. I played a lot of those old style gun games when I was just a tadpole, and remember quite well the black light, the florescent paint on the flying saucers and the nickel sized dot of light that activated the sensor on the middle of the targets. Those old controls were just flashlights that worked in a system with all the complexity of a nightlight that turns itself on when it gets dark. Actual lightguns as we know them are receivers and optics that use some relatively complex software support to make them work.. The two work on such dissimilar levels that lumping them together under the same name (lightgun) is inaccurate. Now if they had said "The History of Shooting Games" or "The History of Arcade Gun Controls"....... RandyT |
| Howard_Casto:
Well not quite.... The lightgun we know today definately isn't the same as those early games in the 40's, 50's 60's and 70's but it is the evolution of those guns. The first true lightguns (by our standards at least) were manufactured by the same people that made the old gallery games, often as an update to their e.m. classics! The term lightgun actually comes from these early e.m. games (although often "light rifle" was used) so if we are going to call one a lightgun and the other something else, we better start thinking of a new name for the guns we use today. ;) Lightgun is a generic term, not specific to any technology.... afterall both the zapper and modern "true" arcade guns are both called lightguns and they couldn't be more different. I know all of this because at one point I was making working, 3d models of e.m. games over at 3darcade. The gallery games seemed to be the most interactive, so that was to be my next project.... making a "diy" gallery editor/player al-la visual pinball. Unfortunately, lack of video and gameplay footage made me lose interest. I did spend hours on end looking up various cabinet styles, manufacturers and classic flyers though. It was pretty obvious looking up this stuff that modern lightgun games are a direct result of these classics and that the term "lightgun" was common-place by the late 60's /early 70's for these games as well. |
| RandyT:
--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on June 01, 2007, 02:14:17 am ---Well not quite.... The lightgun we know today definately isn't the same as those early games in the 40's, 50's 60's and 70's but it is the evolution of those guns. The first true lightguns (by our standards at least) were manufactured by the same people that made the old gallery games, often as an update to their e.m. classics! The term lightgun actually comes from these early e.m. games (although often "light rifle" was used) so if we are going to call one a lightgun and the other something else, we better start thinking of a new name for the guns we use today. ;) Lightgun is a generic term, not specific to any technology.... afterall both the zapper and modern "true" arcade guns are both called lightguns and they couldn't be more different. --- End quote --- I understand your comment, but don't agree. By your definition, you would be calling a plastic gun with tracking points attached to it a "light gun" because it too uses light (reflected) for the system to calculate position through the video cameras monitoring it. If I converted a T2 gun from it's normal analog pots to absolute positioning optical encoders, would you call it a "lightgun"? Both use light to determine position, so why not? Those very early games referred to them as "ray" guns, apparently to take advantage of the "Buck Rogers" mentality of the day. But those controls have as much in common with what we've known as "lightguns" (The skeet shooting controls on early PONG type games, NES Zapper, etc..) as a laser pointer has in common with a lightpen. The term "lightgun" must have first been used to describe a control at one particular and specific point in time. Not "Ray Gun" or "Light Rifle", but specifically a Lightgun or "Lightgun Technology." If you can support what you are saying with this, I would probably be more inclined to agree. And yes, BTW, a new name should be used for new devices that use light-based technologies that are dissimilar to raster tracking used in actual lightguns. And BTW2, what is so different between the ZAPPER and "true arcade lightguns"? They both work on the same principle. RandyT *edit* It may actually be more accurate semantically to call the early rifles with flashlights in them "Light Guns", and it may very well be that everything that comes later is mis-named. However, the technologies in each type of control are so different that if they were animals, they would be considered a different species. So you really cannot talk about "Light Guns" as a generality on the same evolutionary scale. Therefore, if one were to consider a "Light Gun" to be these early flashlight mechanisms, their "history" would end at the precise moment when they stopped using that specific technology. The lightgun that most of us have come to know is comprised of a photo-diode, a lens and a switch of some nature attached to the trigger. Whatever happens on the CRT, or the processing of the events is immaterial. if one had a row of Christmas lights set up in a dark room, controlled so that only one was lit at a time, and an NES Zapper was used to sense whether the light was "hit", then I would consider this a "lightgun" game even though no video was used. |
| Dartful Dodger:
Those guns are too heavy to be called light guns. |
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