Lightgun games now work with HDTV

This awesome guy on youtube figured out how to get lightguns working again on hdtvs so I wanted to spread the word.



According to his comments he would like to see the community make his solution more elegant looking and more affordable. But this is super exciting news for retro gamers!

 

holy crap im saved.
recently got rid of my crt.
now getting a hd tv.
I get my house of the dead.
awesome!

 

Yes now I can finally pick up my NES

 

I hope someone manufactures some kinda kit. A stripped down wiimote that don't have buttons or something so it easily straps onto light guns.

 

EMS in Hong Kong made a light gun that worked on this basic principle back in about 2006 - I think it was only configured to work with the PS2 or (original) Xbox, though. Here's an (old) review of it:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2006/02/16/lcd-topgun-review

 

Great work. But I hope someone will come up with a more elegant solution that this.

As this thing requires a composhite signal, it could be a hassle if you wish to play the Dreamcast through VGA, as the system doesn't output composite when in that mode :/

 

You could just use a SCART with a toro box with the Dreamcast Youd still get a amazing rgb image, especially with a framemeister

 

VGA is much better though

 

This is a cool invention, but still light years from practical use. I'm not rubber banding a Wiimote to my light guns, I'll stick with the ol CRT.

 

This is a great development, and I really hope this gets put into the market as a plug-and-play gadget. Really hope this also gets a high resolution VGA adaption, so that Dreamcast owners can play their Light Gun games in the best quality possible

 

Im sure with some tweaking it could work with VGA too. The creator said it should be fairly simple to put all the components needed on a single pcb. So it would just need a nicer enclosure. Hard part is finding something that can accomplish what the wiimote can do that is just as accurate but affordable.

Looks like maybe a few people already are playing around with ideas to improve this for a more mainstream use, so hopefully in a few months an awesome kit will be available.

 

Perhaps put the ir lights on the gun and keep the wii remote mounted at the tv. However I'm not sure what the min spacing is for ir leds

 

I had an idea for this (for NES at least) and just not the time to test it. The idea is for an in between board (like a game genie) that could intersect ROM calls that handled the check of the lightgun. This would of course have to be done for every game to find out where the "code" would have to be injected. The way that it would work for a slew of tv is similar to the way rock band works. The cart would boot up into a config screen where you are asked to shoot the screen several times. When the trigger is pulled the screen goes all white and the software polls the gun once a frame until the gun sees the white on the screen. The screen goes back to black and user is asked to fire again. After a couple of configuring shots the software would then know the delay of your TV and save it. Then the console is soft reset and the game loads instead of the config software. The in-between cart would have to have a way to detect the game (or maybe user selects it from a list) and when the console hits the memory address to handle gun timing the cart intervenes and delays the check for a few frame.

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20070408160958/http://www.erealgames.com/

 

Too bad they are out of business . But I still like the idea of using classic light guns, like the zapper with todays tv's.

 

A local arcade near me has some of their light gun games converted to use LCD monitors mad and a sensor bar based system like this. IMO they work like shit compared to the standard CRT ones. I hope this method is done better and they can figure out a better way of mounting the appropriate Wiimote components(or a stripped down version of one) to the guns. I definitely applaud the effort but am just skeptical of anything based on the Wiimote paradigm as I've always found them to be a bit off.

 

I can finally play Time Crisis 2 on my HDTV!!! This might make me get rid of the CRT I got recently. Can't wait for someone to start making a kit for this!

 

Sensor bar works, but the problem is you've got so many legacy systems that use different connectors and light schemes.

 

True, but he's shown it can be made compatible with some tweaking even with consoles like Dreamcast and Saturn Really something like this needs a on screen configuration menu.

 

Are you talking about light bars like the Wii? Those just emit IR light to triangulate the signal from what is trying to "see" I believe.