Arcade Light Guns: The Complete Guide

Executive summary

“Lightgun” is a useful genre label, but it hides several incompatible technologies:

1. Mechanical/positional guns measure the physical mechanism rather than light from the display. A cabinet may use potentiometers on a mounted gun, making the display largely irrelevant to aiming. Midway’s *Terminator 2: Judgment Day* is the canonical two-gun example; Taito’s *Operation Wolf* also belongs to the mounted-gun tradition.^[1][2][3]
2. CRT optical guns contain a photodiode or phototransistor and derive aim from the raster scan or from a game-generated flash. They depend on CRT timing/brightness and normally fail on LCD/OLED/projector displays. Konami *Lethal Enforcers*, Atari *Area 51*, the NES Zapper, Sega Light Phaser/Virtua Gun and GunCon/G-Con 45 families sit here.^{[4][5][6][7][8]}
3. Display-external references put illuminated markers around or near the screen and a camera/sensor in the gun. Sega’s later arcade guns, GunCon 3, AimTrak and GUN4IR are examples. These can support fixed-pixel and projected displays because aiming no longer depends on reading a CRT raster.^{[9][10][11][12]}
4. Camera-looking-at-screen systems put a camera in the gun and use screen geometry as the reference. Sinden draws a border around the picture and maps the result to mouse-like coordinates.^[13]
5. Camera-looking-at-controller systems reverse that geometry: PlayStation Eye/Camera sees the illuminated Move sphere. Wii differs again—the camera is in the Wii Remote and the so-called Sensor Bar is an infrared beacon.^[14][15][16]

Recoil is independent of aiming. Arcade guns may use a solenoid, motor, pneumatic mechanism, moving slide, stock vibration, muzzle flash, speaker or a combination; a gun can track perfectly with its recoil disconnected. Conversely, an “arcade gun” can be mounted and force-feedback-equipped without being optical. Preserve this distinction in site copy.

1. How the major sensing families work