If you’re over a certain age, or you’r🍨e a particularly avid arcade fan, you’ll be familiar with light guns. Whether it was playing Duck Hunt for the NES or Time Crisis on the PlayStation, you’d point and aim at the screen, pull the trigger, and watch as you hit your mark. This tech captivated us in our youth, but went the way of the dinosaur when CRT TVs also bit the evolutionary dust.

As we moved onto sleeker, more improved screens, the light gun technology failed to work because it requires the specific way CRT TVs draw the screen line by line. Now, the only place you’ll readily find light guns in a modern setting is in a decent arcade, if you happen to live near one.

Other consoles have since tried to recapture this experience. The Nintendo Wii had the Zapper Gun, which used an infrared video camera in the Wii Remote in conjunction with the sensor bar to achieve a similar effect. PlayStation also tried with the Sharp Shooter peripheral used with the Move cont𓆉roller, which featured inertial sensors to detect motion while the PlayStation camera tracked the movement.

New Technology

Plenty of companies have tried to recapture that nostalgia with new tech or by creating workarounds to make old light guns work on newer model TVs, but it’s never felt like a satisfying end result, as often you’ll get lag or the setup requires too much work. However, that’s all about to change, as G’aim’e has gone🐼 one step further by using brand-new technology to breathe new life into an old classic.

G’aim’e uses bespoke technology that utilises a high-resolution camera and AI instead of the old infrared method we remember from the light guns of our youth, creating a gun so accurate that your annoying little sister can walk 🃏in front of the screen, or you can move around, and it’ll still register your shots accurately.

It’s kept simple, and that’s really part of the beau🐷ty of it. Sometimes we get novelty tech, and it comes with such an annoying setup and mess of cables that it becomes a chore to get out and play. The G’aim’e gun is plug and play; you have the main unit—styled to look like a PS1 Time Crisis game case—that has an AC power cable, HDMI to go to your TV, and then you just plug in your gun and you’re ready to play. Because there are buttons on either side of the gun, it doesn’t matter if you’re left or right-handed either.

There’s also a pedal included in some packages,꧂ so you can re🌄live that authentic Time Crisis arcade experience by reloading at the press of your foot.

Tassei Denkei, the Japanese company that manufactured this new tech for G’aim’e, collaborated with Bandai Namco to put light guns back into the hands of gamers everywhere and invite them to return to some of their favourites: Time Crisis, Point Blank, Steel Gunner, and Steel Gunner 2, just in time for the 30th anniversaryꦍ of the Time Crisis series.

An Evident Demand For A Way To Relive Our Gaming Pasts

The went live on June 25 and smashed its target of £35,236 within ten minutes. If that doesn’t prove there’s still an appetite for light guns, then perhaps the fact that it’s since gone on to earn 14 times that initial goal might prove the point betꦺter.

There are still 29 days 𒁃left of the Kickstarter, too, so who knows where it’ll end up at, but one thing’s for sure: by the end of the year, gamers all over the world will be living it up with a blast from the past fused with the future of new technology.

There are different packages available on Kickstarter, depending on your price range and which games you’re gunning for (see what I d🎶id there?) If, like me, Point Blank is one of your all-time favourites from the PS era, then you’ll need to go for at least the Premium version to get it.

*The Kickstarter page currently says 3m, but G’aim’e have confirmed this will be a 4m rubber cable when it launches.

There won’t be a way to add the additional games onto the Basic version at a later date, a𝐆s the games are pre-installed on the units. However, additional🌳 guns and pedals will be sold separately at launch, should you later decide to add more on.

Why only one ꧃p🌳edal in the Ultimate version? Because Time Crisis is single player, of course!

You’ll notice on the Kickstarter that Japan has an exclusive black gun, but over in the West, we can’t have our gaming gadgets ꦬlook too realistic, so we’ve instead got the neon blue that should rꦕemind any Time Crisis fan of their time spent in the arcades.

I Can Aim Better With A “Real” Gun In My Hands

I’m🐬 historically✨ terrible at FPS games because I can’t aim to save my life. Most games I play that require shooting involve me running out of bullets and then resorting to running up to enemies and meleeing them to death instead. Hey, if it works, it works.

But it’s a whole different experience with a gun peripheral. I still have my old NES, 💯PS1, and original Xbox light guns, but they haven’t seen any action in nearly 30 years. They’re sitting on the side, gathering dust, as were my light gun skills until 🏅I had to step up and show I could still hit a moving target on a screen.

I wasn’t winning any trophies for my performance, but I was pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t as terrible as I feared I might be after so maꦺny years. More importantly, it was damn good fun. Standing in front of your screen, unleashing bullet hell on your enemies, while dodging and ducking enemy fire with a proper gun peripheral is something that all gamers should experience at some point. The gun isn't too heavy, nor is too light, in fact, it feels just like arcade guns do.

I preferred using the reload button on the gun ra꧒ther than the pedal in Time Crisis, as it gave me a good reason to hold the gun with both hands like a proper firearm without feeling as daft in front o🌠f an audience, but I should have just fully embraced it and channelled my inner sharpshooter from the get-go. If you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right.

Iꦿf your aim is a little lacking, you can toggle the crosshairs on the scre🐈en to help you aim.

I adore Point Blank, but I haven’t touched it since the ‘90s, with my last memory being playing it with my cousins, and to be honest, not winning then either. I forgot how hard it could be. The stages where you only get one bullet to hit a target, such as a leaf falling from a tree, are certain to test your gunmanship. But I always remembered how much bloody fun it was, especially playing it with others. I’m pretty sure t💜he PR guy I played with was absolutely letting me win some of the stages to help soothe my ego, but I don’t mind.

The great thing about Steel Gunner and Steel Gunner 2 is that these games have never been on a home console before and have only ever been experienced in ar🍎cades, so this is a big landmark for fans.

G’aim’e Hits Multiple Targets

Japan feels like it has an arcade on every other street, so you’re never far from being able to go out and find a classic arcade gun experience. For those of in the West, especially people like me who live out in the c🌊ountryside, you’ll be lucky if you have an arcade in your immediate town, and it’s more likely to be full of 2p and 10p machines than it is to have a proper gun game like Time Crisis or House of the Dead. But now it doesn’t matter, as G’aim’e is giving us that authentic arcade experience at home.

While it’s a no braine♛r that the G’aime Plug & Play Time Crisis Gun is goin♔g to get the nostalgia juices flowing and have retro enthusiasts like myself drooling for a chance to recapture their youth, it’s got much wider appeal.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve tried to get my💫 son to play a universally agreed upon acclaimed game, only for him to give it 30 minutes and get bored. He’s obsessed with VR gaming though. I think he likes that active aspect of it, and feeling like he’s in mo🐷re of an immersive experience than just sitting on a couch.

While the games might be older than he’s used to, I know he’s going to be just as eager to get h𓄧is hands on this gun, only he’s going to have much better aim than me. He’s equally as competitive as me and my husband, so there’s undoubtedly going to be a showdown in our house at some point. One I won’t win.

I doubt he’ll be the only youngster to appreciate it either. In the same way in which the G’aim’e gun blends an old peripheral with new tech to bring it into the modern era, it’s going to blend old and new fans alike, inviting a new generation of youngs🌜ters to have their first ๊gaming gun experience. The G’aime Plug & Play Time Crisis Gun is aiming to launch before the end of the year, so this might just be one you need to slip on your Christmas lists.

TIME CRISIS™, POINT BLANK™, STEEL GUNNER™Series & ©Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. Tassei Denki Co., Ltd.