The Wii Light Guns are invading! Also, Guncon Question.

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Originally Posted by Me, on Eyesonff.com

So, there are quite a few designs for Wii Light Guns, such as the Wii Blaster and The Wii Zapper and the Brando Magnum, which is teh awesomez. I think there are so many Light Gun Designs by 3rd Party Accessory Developers because they don't have to make the Light-Gun part, obviously. What I don't like is that, unless it's a shot-gun design like the Wii Blaster, it's very awkward to hit the A Button. Not that you'd need to, since all shooters for the Wii are using the B button at this point for shooting, sans Metal Slug Anthology for fairly obvious reasons. But still, it just takes away one more button from a controller that already acts the same way without it.

But why do people even buy these peripherals? I know I want one for Ghost Squad, but I've no idea why. Perhaps just for novelty, but it's not actually a light-gun, so unless you have your distance from the T.V. and the Wii Sensor Bar positioned (and perhaps modded) just so, you won't be aiming at the enemies on screen. It's like a gun-shaped mouse. All it really does is add more weight to your controller.

Also, something that bugs me a bit about Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. From what I hear, the default controls have you shake the nunchuk in order to reload, but when using the Tommy Gun design of the Wii Zapper, reloading sounds like something incredible cumbersome to do, since you're trying to shake an object which is less than one pound, and yet, you end up shaking a large controller shell, and a controller with two batteries in it. Perhaps it will make it feel more like a real gun, but it just sounds like somewhat of a hassle to me. Of course, you can go into Wiimote Only mode, but then you have to have the Nunchuk on anyway for a decent grip on your controller, adding extra weight, when you really don't need it there. But you could get the Brando Light Gun, I guess, which is shaped like a Magnum. Or, better yet, a Puddy Gun. Or, perhaps, for the sake of logic, use a Wii Remote.

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Well, there's my little thoughts on Wii Light Gun peripherals. But I'd also like to ask a few questions about Time Crisis 4, and how the Guncon controller works. You see, from what I hear, the Guncon Controller acts similarly to a Wii Remote Pointer, in that they observe specific lights to find location. Infrared, if I remember right. Candles also work, as many already know. But I also know that Time Crisis 4 does NOT have a cursor on-screen, meaning the player is relying on their eye-sight for aim, and not a mouse-like control scheme the Wii Remote offers. I believe this is due to having two, entirely separated "Head Lights", rather than one bar with a "Head Light" on each side, like with the Wii. So, if I were to mod these Guncon "Head Lights" in a similar fashion to how people made Home-Made Sensor Bars, and then used these "Head Lights" with my Wii, could I achieve the effect of a regular light-gun when using the Wii Remote?

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Originally Posted by Kentarou

Well, there's my little thoughts on Wii Light Gun peripherals. But I'd also like to ask a few questions about Time Crisis 4, and how the Guncon controller works. You see, from what I hear, the Guncon Controller acts similarly to a Wii Remote Pointer, in that they observe specific lights to find location. Infrared, if I remember right. Candles also work, as many already know. But I also know that Time Crisis 4 does NOT have a cursor on-screen, meaning the player is relying on their eye-sight for aim, and not a mouse-like control scheme the Wii Remote offers. I believe this is due to having two, entirely separated "Head Lights", rather than one bar with a "Head Light" on each side, like with the Wii. So, if I were to mod these Guncon "Head Lights" in a similar fashion to how people made Home-Made Sensor Bars, and then used these "Head Lights" with my Wii, could I achieve the effect of a regular light-gun when using the Wii Remote?

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I doubt it has anything to do with the hardware. I'd bet on it working like the old Super Scope 6 for the SNES, and everytime you start it up it has you aim at a target to calibrate your aim. Then it will be able to extrapolate where you're aiming at on screen and avoid the whole glorified mouse syndrome the wiimote tends to have. Granted, I haven't read that anywhere so I could be wrong, but it seems to me like it would be an easy way to avoid having to aim a cursor (which defeats the whole purpose of having a controller shaped like a gun).

That actually probably is how it works, now that you mention it. I haven't heard of any kind of of calibration process, though.

The older Time Crisis games had calibration on it the first time you start it up as well, and I'm pretty sure that a cursor was on at least the calibration screen. The Wii doesn't offer the same level of calibration that a Time Crisis game would.
On the Wii you can only set it as 'sensor bar above/below the screen', then with +/- 3 vertical levels. It's not a sufficient setup for true 'line of sight' aiming, especially if your TV is not in an optimal position.
Time Crisis on the other hand tells you to 'aim at the center of the screen', which does use precise line-of-sight for aiming. The GunCon3 in particular is using even more advanced technology for this due to the use of sensors.

So, if the 'sensor blocks' for the Guncon 3 have the same basic function as the Wii's sensor bar, it's feasible to have a mod to work with both of them. However the Wiimote will not perform like 'a regular lightgun', it'll be the same as usual.

The PlayStation.Blog has been having a short series on the GunCon 3. I don't know how many they are doing, but there are 2 posts so far and the newest one was just yesterday.
Part 1
Part 2

The 2nd one in particular goes into a little detail on how accurate the Guncon is with the new setup.

Also, since it hasn't been mentioned, the reason all these things need sensors is because traditional lightguns don't work on a good deal of HDTVs (if not all of them).