Night Stocker, Gunbuster and other lightgun FPSs.

[Drum]

Was just playing some Gunbuster on MAME and that is a great game. In the same year Wolfenstein 3D was released (1992), Taito made a first person shooter with what is pretty much the modern standard FPS setup - 8-way stick for wasd, lightgun for mouse. With co-op and (correct me if I am wrong here) versus. Levels are arena-style boss battles, which is somewhat disappointing I guess, but they're varied within that framework and they get sorta big later on, and there's a sweet hoverbike shootout on a race circuit! Fun times. If anyone knows the game, could they elaborate on how it works with the original two screen arcade setup? I know you can go co-op on one screen (and presumably dual-wield at the cost of spacial movement).

http://www.arcade-history.com/?n=gunbus ... il&id=1050

Preceded (by some 6 years) in 1986 there was Night Stocker, a completely awesome driving game/light gun shooter that I rate as the best light gun game ever (except for maybe Gumshoe). Game is just simple, clever fun and it's too bad it's virtually unknown and unrecognised.

http://www.arcade-history.com/?n=night- ... il&id=1772

Does anybody know any other examples of the form? There's Lucky & Wild ... what else?

[Obiwanshinobi]

Half-Life 2: Survivor comes to mind.

[Drum]

First time I've seen that running - I didn't realise it was actually a FPS, I thought they just converted it to a straight light gun shooter.
Half Life 2 is a very, very strange game to slap neon arrows all over - pointing you in the right direction with natural cues was something the OG version did really well, I thought (though it helps that it is basically a rollercoaster).

[Ed Oscuro]

Valve has partnered with some rather tone-deaf companies for "Asianifying" (or Japanifying) some of their games, and HL Survivor (I think it's essentially Half-Life Deathmatch in ugly levels, actually) is just one. Not only is there the South Korean game Counter-Strike Online by Nexon (which I think anybody who's played both Counter-Strike and Nexon's Combat Arms should probably know exactly what it'd be like, since the extra mode descriptions are almost exactly like Combat Arms games modes) but there's also a Namco partnership where an apparently even further anime- and neon-ified Counter-Strike has appeared, as Counter-Strike Neo. Good grief. To answer the question inherent in your reply, Drum, this has all been done for the greater good of bringing ugly Western game to Japanese tulip festival happyland (or something). Actually, Nexon's CS Online seems much truer to the original, and their title art looks actually pretty decent - South Korea showing a bit more affinity for (or tolerance of?) Western FPS titles in the market (which is nothing new - there was a Korean version or expansion or something to one of the original Rainbow Six games, from like 2001 if memory serves).

Anyway, I credit-fed through Gunbuster when I found it in MAME a couple years ago, surely mentioned it here, but I never got really good at it. Sometime I'll try again. I don't recall using the mouse with it, maybe that's why it played badly. I do remember the moving reticle though. If anything, the moving reticle + joystick movement reminds me more of Goldeneye (which was envisioned as something like DOOM + Time Crisis), or even the infamous Jurassic Park: Trespasser.

[louisg]

I loved this game in the arcade! It was also years and years ahead of its time with its control scheme and deathmatch focus (and I prefer the threshold-turn moving-cursor aiming style to the nose-gun approach). Technically, it's pretty amazing, too. I think it uses scaled sprites for the walls, and it manages to incorporate both cool raster effects and segmented bosses (the segmented sprites are a necessity for bosses to appear somewhat boss-like in 3d). In contrast, the bosses in other FPS games for years were rather stiff and lazily designed in comparison until polygons.

I'd consider it highly influential if anyone writing FPS games knew about it

[Koa Zo]

What is Gun Survivor 4 like on PS2? Does that one or any other PS2 lightgun game make use of the d-pad on the back on the GunCon 2?

[PC Engine Fan X!]

At the famous Modesto, CA based Regency Game Palace arcade hangout, they had a USA region Taito of America (ToA) variant Gunbuster cab setup for arcade gamers to try out -- this was from 1992 to 1994 until they (Regency) finally closed their doors for good in June of 1994. I've never came across another Gunbuster cab since then. Considering that it was ToA that handled the proper Stateside release of Gunbuster cabs...I'd have to say that distribution was fairly small due the bigger overall cab dimensions. I noticed that at the Regency arcade, the arcade manager had to move some arcade cabs further just to accomodate this newfangled Gunbuster cab (considering that it took up more valuable real-estate space than a typical American woodie cab -- i.e. Dynamo cab).

On a typical Gunbuster cab, there was a cool divider barrier that would cover both Player 1's & Player 2's portion of the screen (even extending to the actual arcade monitor itself) -- it was just a dual raster-scan arcade RGB monitor presentation endowed with an 8-way digital joystick + fixed mounted X/Y axis Light Gun with motorized feedback (for that extra realism/wow factor) for each player. Either player could take peek over this physical barrier to better see where the other player was and go in for "the kill" (if playing a deathmatch session). Considering that Namco released it's own famous fixed X/Y axis based Light Gun based arcade cabs with the Steel Gunner & Steel Gunner 2 franchise, Taito went the extra mile by incorporating FPS gameplay mechanics along with the traditional gameplay of such a dedicated fixed X/Y axis gun setup. If you turned the gun to either the left or the right side of the screen, it would rotate your character's position (which was a newfangled concept for the arcade game scene indeed).

Taito's Gunbuster cab (circa 1992) does share the same name of that of famed Gainax's "Gunbuster: Aim For the Top!" 3-part Original Video Animation (OVA) series but really is a different genre altogether.

It'd sure be nice if Namco would make a proper Steel Gunner 3 arcade Light Gun game sequel. It'd nice to see some cool CG rendered intro and cut scenes of futuristic mecha suits armed to the teeth with some super heavy weaponry duking it out. Could Sturm be resurrected and back for revenge?

Sadly, the USA region variant of Gunbuster isn't playable on Mame/Mame32 emulation but the original JPN region of Gunbuster is. There are some slight changes with the ToA release of Gunbuster including the omission of the opening intro that shows a Terminator-like character (as not to infringe on Midway's T2 fixed-axis Light Gun arcade game that was released a year earlier back in 1991).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Drum]

At the famous Modesto, CA based Regency Game Palace arcade hangout, they had a USA region Taito of America (ToA) variant Gunbuster cab setup for arcade gamers to try out -- this was from 1992 to 1994 until they (Regency) finally closed their doors for good in June of 1994. I've never came across another Gunbuster cab since then. Considering that it was ToA that handled the proper Stateside release of Gunbuster cabs...I'd have to say that distribution was fairly small due the bigger overall cab dimensions. I noticed that at the Regency arcade, the arcade manager had to move some arcade cabs further just to accomodate this newfangled Gunbuster cab (considering that it took up more valuable real-estate space than a typical American woodie cab -- i.e. Dynamo cab).

On a typical Gunbuster cab, there was a cool divider barrier that would cover both Player 1's & Player 2's portion of the screen (even extending to the actual arcade monitor itself) -- it was just a dual raster-scan arcade RGB monitor presentation endowed with an 8-way digital joystick + fixed mounted X/Y axis Light Gun with motorized feedback (for that extra realism/wow factor) for each player. Either player could take peek over this physical barrier to better see where the other player was and go in for "the kill" (if playing a deathmatch session). Considering that Namco released it's own famous fixed X/Y axis based Light Gun based arcade cabs with the Steel Gunner & Steel Gunner 2 franchise, Taito went the extra mile by incorporating FPS gameplay mechanics along with the traditional gameplay of such a dedicated fixed X/Y axis gun setup. If you turned the gun to either the left or the right side of the screen, it would rotate your character's position (which was a newfangled concept for the arcade game scene indeed).

Taito's Gunbuster cab (circa 1992) does share the same name of that of famed Gainax's "Gunbuster: Aim For the Top!" 3-part Original Video Animation (OVA) series but really is a different genre altogether.

It'd sure be nice if Namco would make a proper Steel Gunner 3 arcade Light Gun game sequel. It'd nice to see some cool CG rendered intro and cut scenes of futuristic mecha suits armed to the teeth with some super heavy weaponry duking it out. Could Sturm be resurrected and back for revenge?

Sadly, the USA region variant of Gunbuster isn't playable on Mame/Mame32 emulation but the original JPN region of Gunbuster is. There are some slight changes with the ToA release of Gunbuster including the omission of the opening intro that shows a Terminator-like character (as not to infringe on Midway's T2 fixed-axis Light Gun arcade game that was released a year earlier back in 1991).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

Awesome, thanks for the write-up - cool to hear from somebody who experienced it in person, wasn't expecting that (I just hoped). It's weird to think of this game coming out when PC shooters were still dicking around with strafe buttons (remember those?) - people are only just recently discovering FPSs that make use of light gun-esque pointer controls. I found the game plays very well with a mouse, but it would have been nice to give it a go on the original machine and try out versus. Was thinking about picking up a pair of PC LCD light guns, but it might be better to do a wiimote hack to approximate the experience.