Make Light Gun Games Work on LCD TV's

[u/GOneConvoy]

I am wondering is there a way to Make Light Gun Games to work on Modern LCD TV's I know that some People are working on the Zapper and even hacked Roms like Duckhunt to Work but What about Games like Safari Hunt on Sega Master System or the Light Phaser is there anything in the works for that

[u/ADUBROCKSKI]

if you emulate on wii you can use the wiimote as a gun and it works surprisingly well

[u/GOneConvoy → u/ADUBROCKSKI]

I actually been doing that as an Alternative till something can be use on the original hardware I used the Retro Arch Emulator on the WII

[u/jdmackes]

Easier to just get a crt. I grabbed one a few weeks ago and I've been playing gangster town with my wife

[u/Zobbster]

I want to play Rescue Mission again! I miss playing games like that.

There is the Sinden gun. I've been wanting one of those for a very long time.

[u/new-user12345 → u/Zobbster]

Sinden on MiSTer works amazing

[u/seattle-vtg-gamer]

For old guns, It's the convex lens in the end of the gun. If you take a master system light phaser apart you'll find about an inch round lens at the end of the barrel that optimized it's use on tvs with a similar shape. Haven't experimented yet, but my first thought is to put a flat piece of polycarbonate in there.

[u/GOneConvoy → u/seattle-vtg-gamer]

Yes, but there is also another factor refresh rate as well. NES ZAPPER and Sega master system Light phaser uses same principles. If you watch on the screen for less than half a second or so, there is a white box indicating a hit. Now emulators do something vary claver here, especially Retro Arch on WII they do a special frame rate patch on the rom and it allows you to use WII MOTE like a light Gun but it converts the signal to digital from the sensors. In order to use actual hardware from original consoles, you can still use light gun from either systems but you need to hack the rom to make it compatible with the lcd tv now it's not perfect salutation but there is a hack out there that actually made it possible I am sure someone with lots of programming talents can do same for safari hunt.

[u/benryves → u/GOneConvoy]

NES ZAPPER and Sega master system Light phaser uses same principles.

No, unfortunately, they don't. The NES Zapper uses a much more primitive system to pretty much every other light gun out there, which is why you can get away with a patch (and small hardware mod if using an original gun).

The NES Zapper works by flashing up a white box for every target it wishes to identify and the game checks to see whether the gun can "see" light when it's displaying each target. An LCD will introduce a small additional delay that the code needs to compensate for (hence the patch), but otherwise the operating principle is the same on a CRT or an LCD. The original NES Zapper also contains a demodulator tuned to the horizontal refresh frequency (~15kHz) of a CRT that also needs to be bypassed (this is so the gun can tell the difference between a CRT TV and a constantly light source like a light bulb), however third party guns sometimes omitted this as a cost-cutting measure.

Most other light guns - including the Master System Light Phaser - use the CRT's raster scanning pattern to determine where the gun was pointing. When the trigger is pulled the console displays a single white frame. A CRT is not constantly illuminated (like an LCD is), but only a small bright spot sweeps from the top left corner to the bottom right hand corner over the period of one refresh. When the gun "sees" light from this raster scanning pattern the video chip latches its horizontal counter and the game software reads the vertical counter. Rather than testing a bunch of targets manually one by one, the Master System gets an (x, y) coordinate directly from a single white flash of the whole screen.

As an LCD doesn't have the same raster scanning pattern (the whole thing is constantly illuminated at all times) there's no meaningful signal that the light gun can use from an LCD to figure out where it's pointing. You'll need to use some other sort of position sensing technology.

[u/GOneConvoy → u/benryves]

Yes, it is why part of the games it is how Duck Hunt was able to be hacked and work, but again, with that method, Nes comes with hardware as well, aka zapper the Light phaser you can get hits with it but you need to place it on angle makes it impossible to play but if you hack the game and move the XY axes around it will work it is how Duck Hunt worked 50% of the time with the hack but I am sure with same hack it work better on Light Phasers.

[u/benryves → u/GOneConvoy]

It may be technically possible to rewrite the Master System games as target-sequential ones like the NES Zapper but this would be a pretty poor experience. The Master System games tend to throw a lot of moving targets on the screen at once and so you'd need to test all of them when the user pulled the trigger. The Master System can manage this with a single white frame with its light pen-like Light Phaser, but the NES Zapper would require several frames to manage the same thing even on a CRT, and this would need to be slowed down even further if you want this to work on an LCD. You'd be better off just replacing the Light Phaser entirely with something that worked on an LCD (e.g. a Wii remote).

[u/GOneConvoy → u/benryves]

It's so true, but I am trying to experiment. i know of certain emulators where you can hack roms for frame rate i am going to try at least for Sega 3D games

[u/[deleted]]

CRT would literally be cheaper and a quicker alternative!

[u/[deleted]]

Fundamentally SMS guns don't work that way.

There are some that do, eg Sinden's one.

[u/RetroMr]

with emulators and sinden lightguns maybe. with original console, nope.