Developed and Manufactured by Nintendo

Released- 1992 in North America/Europe and Japan

The Super Scope is the official first party light gun for the Super Nintendo and was released in 1992 to North America, Europe, and gained a limited release in Japan due to a lack of consumer demand at the time for another expensive and limited use addon (after salt most likely being rubbed into the wounds of Power Glove owners after they purchased that….”so bad” is right…).

This thing is huge.

Ok…maybe not that huge….

It’s bigger than most of the previous light guns released for consoles like the NES Zapper and later the Sega’s Menacer/Justifier. It’s shaped like a Bazooka and is just over half a meter in length. It has 3 buttons (Pause, Fire and the Cursor) and a 3 way power switch (Turbo, On, Off). It also has an accurate scope for looking down and targeting the screen.

Looking down the barrel you can see the area holding the infra red LED’s which beam data back to the SNES via the control box which is placed on top of the TV (unlike the NES zapper there is a box that plugs into controller port 2 on the SNES, and semi acts in the same way as the Wii’s). The main barrel/lens “reads”the action on screen.

Here’s how it works. First a little history and a minor setback for modern-gamers turned retro. Do not expect this to play fair with your $1337 Sunny Bravo 42” HD TV.

Back in the day, CRTS’s were what was around back when this was released. In laymans terms the screen refreshes vertically, drawing one line at a time, so fast the eye cannot see, whereas LCD/Plasmas of today refresh in one go, thus leading to a lot of confusion for the light gun and receiver on what is being drawn when.

When you first start a game you are given a calibration screen. This tells the SNES exactly where the gun is in relation to the TV and sets out the first basic co-ordinates.

Step 1. Enemy is drawn on screen each frame, you aim and pull the trigger, the screen is refreshed and flashes and the gun instantaneously receives data on where you shot, depending what pixel was lit up.

Step 2. The gun then takes this information of either a 1 (hit) or 0 (miss) and sends the co ordinates to the set top box sitting on your tv.

Step 3. The set top box decodes the information and it runs down the cable to controller port for further processing on the SNES.

Step 4. The SNES then feed’s this back to the TV and depending if your aim was off or not, shoots the missile where you shot, which could well be nowhere near the enemy or a well placed hit.

My first surprise after playing with the Super Scope is how insanely accurate it actually is if you don’t suck at the calibration round and can actually shoot straight with no moving targets. It reacts as you would expect it to depending how bad or good you are.

The only downside would be the sights, having to close off one eye and looking through an oversized pinhole for any extended length of time hurts, and will eventually give you some nice disorientation. Thankfully most game rounds are less than a minute or two, so breaks are frequent.

The Super Scope itself was bundled with a cartridge called “Super Scope 6”. A package of 6 games in two categories. First you have “Blastris”which comprises of 2 Tetris style shooting games, where you blow up blocks to create lines either horizontally or vertically and a crazy whack-a-mole style game called “Mole Patrol” that has you shooting what look like rodents on the moon.

The second set of games are far more interesting, and could be considered more “mature”. LazerBlazer is a group of 3 different types of games. The first game, “Intercept” is a side scroller and has you shooting down missiles as they go left to right across the screen miss 5, and its game over.

Mini game number 2 is called “Engage” and can be compared with a first person After Burner or Space Harrier. It’s an on rails shooter, and varying enemies and missiles fly towards you for you to take out. Take 5 hits, or run out of fuel and that’s it for you.

Finally, the last mini game is called “Confront”, the only one of the three mini games that gives you infinite rounds to take out the enemy. You have limited hit points, but these can be gained back by shooting flashing enemies, again- 5 strikes and you’re out.

For such a great bundle, you’d probably be quite happy with the amount of longetivity back in that day an age (lets face it, in the PS2/PS1 days we were spoilt with lightgun games). Having said that, there are 11 other games compatible with the Super Scope, the most fun ones being Yoshi’s Safari, T2 (Terminator) Arcade, and Aerosmith’s Revolution X.

Within our shores, all this is very hard to find, with it never having actually gained a release at all within NZ. My Super Scope was nabbed in a lucky but pricey buy now on TradeMe, and came all the way from England originally when it’s owners immigrated.

I can’t wrap up this article without a comment on the build quality. It’s rock solid, and doesn’t really feel like a toy, it carries a bit of weight, and there is something hideously manly about shooting your TV with a bazooka.

All in all, another worthwhile purchase- if you can find one!

Lucky for you then, that we will have this down at our stand for you to try at Armageddon!