I feel like talking about a special breed of games today: peripheral gun games. Now a days, you mostly see them in arcades or on the Wii, since first person shooters are more popular (though technically, this is shooting in the first person). A while back, it seemed every system needed one, but now, this quote unquote gimmick’s time has passed (Guitar Hero proves though, peripheral games will never die). So let’s take a look at some of these games that put the gun in your hand with Hogan’s Alley for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Virtua Cop for the Sega Saturn.
Hogan’s Alley uses to iconic Zapper gun, which most people would remember playing Duck Hunt with. The way it worked was pretty cool: when the trigger is pulled, it gives a command that changes the current screen to black and white ones (you probably noticed a flash when you shoot, this is it). White squares will replace the objects you can shoot, one on each frame for each target. The white light should be received by the zapper if you were aiming properly giving a signal to the game. There are issues though: this doesn’t work on LCD or plasma TVs, at a certain distance, it sometimes stops working and if you aim it at a light bulb, it can mess things up, probably in your favor.
The game was pretty much a shooting range for the NES. In the main mode, three cardboard cut-outs would appear and you’d quickly have to asses which ones to shoot before time runs out. There is another mode where tin cans come on screen and you have to shoot them to the other side for points. That’s pretty much it though, and I can’t see much fun in it, outside getting together with your friends and seeing who has the best draw. Though, for such a simplistic game, its legacy lives on: it has been referenced in the Wario Ware series and part of Wii Play. I guess there’s something about it that people just enjoy.
Virtua Cop, on the other hand, is a different story: I found it fun on my own and had a point to it, but seems to be forgotten despite having 2 sequels. The big problem here would have been the system: the Sega Saturn (not counting for the arcade versions in this review though). To talk about how the gun works, when I pull the trigger, I did notice a flash of white, but then I saw on the “name input” screen that it knew where I was pointing without having to pull the trigger. I can only assume (since I can find how it really works) it took the technology of the zapper, and improved on it. It actually feels a lot more accurate: I can normally always get my shot while in Hogan’s Alley, I sometimes miss for no reason. But what I really like about this game is that you don’t NEED the gun to play it! You could play Virtua Cop with a just the regular controller, unlike Hogan’s Alley and other such games. However, moving your cursor around to shoot can sometimes just NOT be done quickly enough, and I strongly recommend getting the gun. It helped my game.
To explain the story as Fairly Odd Parents would put it, you are (a loose cannon cop who doesn't play by the rules) . You go around shooting bad guy who will shoot at you given the chance (green circle around them) to eventually get to their boss. You’ll move rail-shooter style through three locations depending on your difficulty: the docks, a quarry and business tower, all very typical action cop movies. I guess that’s why I like this game, it has a Die Hard feel to it, and taking out six bad guys with six bullets makes me feel like I could be John McCain.
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