The Video Game Revue

Zapper Games on the Rise

Thanks to the Wiimote, "zapper" shooters are making a comeback. So far I've heard of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (recently released), Link's Crossbow Training, and Sega's House of the Dead Collection. I find this personally exciting because this genre of games has been a favorite since the days of Operation Wolf and Duck Hunt.

I'd like to correct a slip made by the GameTrailers.com review of RE: Umbrella Chronicles. These games are not "rail shooters," which is a term that generally refers to a particular style of fly-and-shoot style games where the user has heavily limited control (if any) over the flying aspect. Classic rail shooters include Panzer Dragoon, Sewer Shark, and StarFox. Please refrain from calling Wii zapper games "rail shooters;" prefer the term "light-gun games," if you must.

Now what would truly make me happy is to see the likes of Virtua Cop, Time Crisis, and--especially--Point Blank make it to the Wii. Silent Scope is another great title, but doing it properly on the Wii might be tough; it would require an expensive peripheral to properly emulate the game's scope mechanic. Several Time Crisis series titles have already been ported to the PS2, and an adaptation of Point Blank was made for the Nintendo DS (a briefly amusing little game, but can't do justice to the original), so bringing these games to the Wii seems like a no-brainer to me. I'm not sure how many Virtual Cop fans are left out there, but I've considered it one of the finest examples of the genre ever since its release; everyone else seems to prefer Lethal Enforcers, which itself is a solid game.

Are we going to see the a renaissance of this genre whose popularity has waned with the decline of the arcade? Time will tell.

posted by Parappa @ 10:50 AM