A type of video game where the player uses a pointing device in the shape of a gun to shoot at targets onscreen. In many cases, the targeting sensor is built into the gun itself, and the moving targets light up, instead of the other way around. Most light gun games double as Rail Shooters, in that the player's path is fixed and he/she can proceed only after all hostiles have been eliminated.
The first commercial electromechanical light gun game was the Seeburg Ray-O-Matic
, introduced in 1936. The player's weapon fired a beam of light; if it hit the photosensitive tube mounted on the moving duck-shaped target, a circuit was completed and the player scored. Like many other arcade games, electromechanical light gun games were generally replaced by more versatile, fully electronic models (which used the sensor-gun design mentioned above) during The '70s and Eighties.
The light gun shooter genre is popular in arcades, some of the most popular being Lethal Enforcers, Virtua Cop, and Time Crisis. Console light gun shooters have also popped up from time-to-time, but fell out of favor in the early 2000s with the rise in popularity of First Person Shooters. It should also be noted that many older lightgun games won't work on modern televisions, as the guns relied on the way CRT TV sets refreshed the screen to tell where you were aiming. Instead, current gun games, particularly those in arcades, use infrared sensors tracked by the gun (which is an infrared camera designed to resemble a gun), so that the monitor and the gun aiming are completely independent of each other; this allows for modern gun games to use plasma and LCD screens. The Wii is similar, using a "sensor bar" that is tracked by the Wii Remote to determine the location of the on-screen cursor (if any), making it an affordable platform for native gun games and arcade gun game ports. The PlayStation Move add-on for the PlayStation 3 is also compatible in the same fashion.
Some of these arcade games are technically not light gun games but "joystick gun" games, as the aiming mechanism is actually a joystick firmly mounted on the face of the cabinet, upon which the gun is mounted. This makes holding and aiming the gun as if it were real simply impossible, but makes keeping your aim steady a hell of a lot easier. In Silent Scope, Revolution X, and T2 the gun requires calibration as part of its boot sequence, though this is not true of other "joystick gun" games like the sprite-based Jurassic Park motion seat game. The later 2010's saw a resurgences of mounted light gun games in arcades due to them allowing for faster gameplay plus being cheaper to produce than the plasma screen sensors though there are some occasional instances of the traditional set up.
Notable arcade light gun games:
- After Dark
- Aliens
- Area 51
- Brave Firefighters: Sort of. You use a simulated firehose to put out fires, but the principle and hardware are the same kind as those of gun games.
- CarnEvil
- Crime Patrol: Full Motion Video Light Gun game
- Crypt Killer: First non-mounted gun game to allow three players.
- Dark Escape 4D
- Deadstorm Pirates
- Dream Raiders
- Evil Night: Konami's answer to House of the Dead, also allows three players to play at once, similar to Crypt Killer.
- GHOST Squad
- Ghoul Panic
- Golgo 13 (For the light gun games from 1999 to 2001)
- Gunblade NY & L.A. Machineguns
- Gunslinger Stratos: Has two guns you must dual wield by default, that can be combined into a larger gun, and is a Hero Shooter instead of a Rail Shooter.
- Guntu Western Front June 1944
- Haunted Museum (Panic Museum in Japan)
- Haunted Museum II: Shh! Welcome to Frightfearland (just the subtitle for exports)
- House of the Dead
- Laser Ghost
- Lethal Enforcers
- Let's Go Jungle: Lost on the Island of Spice
- Lost Land Adventure
- Lupin The 3rd: The Shooting
- Jurassic Park (Arcade): The first three games at least. Fourth game is a mounted gun game.
- Mad Dog McCree: Full Motion Video Light Gun game
- Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold and The Last Bounty Hunter
- The Maze Of The Kings
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Spirits of Zeon
- Monster Eye
- Ninja Assault: Ninjas with guns.
- The Ocean Hunter
- Point Blank
- Police 911
- Razing Storm
- Sega Golden Gun
- Target Terror
- Terminator: Salvation
- Time Crisis
- Too Spicy (notable as it also is a third-person, versus multiplayer lightgun game)
- Total Vice
- Tomb Raider Arcade: A repacked version of the 2013 game made into a rail shooter. Standard cabinets allows up to four players.
- Transformers Human Alliance
- Vampire Night: A joint game from Sega and Namco under the WOW Entertainment Label.
- Virtua Cop
- Who Shot Johnny Rock
- Zombie Raid A 1995 zombie shooter from Sammy Corporation, notable for its animated gore and intense difficulty.
Notable arcade joystick gun games:
- Alien 3: The Gun
- Aliens: Extermination
- Aliens Armageddon (Sometimes labeled Alien Covenant in a rather rushed attempt to tie in with the then upcoming 2017 movie. Other the then title change, though, it's still the same game).
- Beast Busters
- Beast Busters: The 2nd Encounter, jump from 2-D to 3-D.
- Halo: Fireteam Raven: Four player shooter.
- Operation Wolf
- Plants vs. Zombies: The Last Stand
- Revolution X
- Silent Scope
- T2: The Arcade Game (used a mounted machine gun as its controller; the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis ports, however, were light gun games)
- The Terminator: Salvation arcade game is a unique example, as it's available as either a joystick gun version (the 32-inch compact version) or a traditional light gun version (the 42-inch deluxe and 100-inch super-deluxe models).
- The Walking Dead Arcade
Notable console light gun games:
- Battle Clash and its sequel, Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge
- Dead Space: Extraction, for both being a well-designed game by itself and a good continuity nod to all previous Dead Space material, almost too good to be called Continuity Porn.
- Duck Hunt is one of the best-known examples because it was packaged as one of the NES's flagship titles.
- Elemental Gearbolt, featuring some beautiful music and environmental design and an attempt at something beyond the usual Excuse Plot, via anime cutscenes between each level.
- Endgame, one of the lightgun titles that proves what the PlayStation 2 was made for.
- Hogan's Alley: One of the NES launch titles.
- Link's Crossbow Training: Bundled with the Wii Zapper peripheral.
- Medal of Honor Heroes 2 has an arcade mode, which turns the game into an on-rails shooter.
- Resident Evil Gun Survivor had its GunCon compatibility removed from the first game for its US release, but it's intact in sequels Survivor 2, Dino Stalker and Dead Aim.
- Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles and Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles are more traditional arcade-style rail shooters.
- Sin and Punishment: Star Successor
- Yoshi's Safari
Other:
- Astro Blasters is a Disney Theme Park variation of this.
- "Hero's Duty" in the movie Wreck-It Ralph is a sci-fi themed light gun game.
- Men In Black: Alien Attack at Universal Studios Florida is this in ride-form.
- Snatcher on the Sega CD supported the Justifier light gun for the shooting segments.
