Thank you MyGaime for sending us the G'AIM'E Gun Ultimate to review!

While I can't say I've been an ultra-hardcore light gun gamer, I certainly have fond memories of them. I played NES classics like Duck Hunt and Hogan's Alley, and I got to use a Super Scope 6 once that I can recall. Later, I played several games at the arcade, and one of my brothers is a huge fan. He built several arcade cabinets for his basement, and has a dedicated light gun cabinet, where he plays several games including Time Crisis 4. So, as you can imagine, when given the opportunity to review the G'AIM'E Gun, I jumped at the chance.

There are three different editions of the G'AIM'E Gun. The least expensive is the Basic pack for $99.99. This one includes the mini console, one gun, and the single Time Crisis game only. I don't recommend anyone get this bundle, because the three other included games are also a lot of fun and worth getting. The middle package is the Premium version. This one includes all four games (Time Crisis, Point Blank, and Steel Gunner 1 & 2) and a single gun to play it with. It also includes a pedal to make Time Crisis a more authentic experience. If you never plan on playing with a friend, you can get this one and purchase an additional gun later for $69.99. In the long run, the Ultimate edition is the best value as it includes two guns, the pedal, all four games, and some other nice bonuses like a Time Crisis diorama along with a power brick (the others rely on you having your own since it's a standard 5V 3A USB-C AC adapter). As a result, I recommend most interested gamers spring for the Ultimate edition for $199.99.

When I opened the box for the first time, I was impressed with not only how much they packed in a small box, but how high-quality everything feels. The mini-console itself is a pretty standard plastic square with ports, with no doubt a single-board computer inside. While that isn't particularly special, the guns and pedal really do feel great. They are made from a high-quality and strong plastic, and the trigger has great feedback, doubly so if you enable rumble with the switch on the side. The four other buttons make a decent click when you press them; they aren't as responsive as the main trigger, but they don't have to be.

Outside of the main trigger, there is an A button, a B button, a coin insert button, and a pause button. There's a cable that comes out of the bottom of the handle, like you might expect. The cables are surprisingly long on both the guns and pedal, being four meters (about 13 feet). The guns are very sturdy and feel like they could take a bit of abuse (though I wouldn't recommend that, since they have cameras inside). The Time Crisis game logo along with G'AIM'E's logo is emblazoned on both sides. It does make some sense, as this G'AIM'E pack is designed to celebrate Time Crisis' 30th anniversary. The camera lens that makes them work is inside the gun barrel. The included pedal is also nice, with a thick sturdy plastic that should handle being stepped on many times.

The guns are used in all four included games, while the pedal is useful in Time Crisis alone. All four games are licensed from Bandai Namco. The games by chronological release date are Steel Gunner in 1990, followed by Steel Gunner 2 in 1992, followed by Point Blank in 1994. The main draw is of course Time Crisis, released in 1995. While the other three games are from the pixel era of graphics, Time Crisis steps into the early era of 3D graphics. It's certainly the most advanced of the games in the collection, and has the most interesting cinematics as well. I can totally understand why it's the only game included in all editions.

All of the games included are of high quality and are pretty fun to play. In both Steel Gunner titles, you play as police officers Garcia and Cliff, and fight against terrorists who are attacking Neo Arc City. These terrorists have quite the arsenal, as you and your (optional) partner take out the high-tech and heavily-armed force you're fighting against. These games offer fast-paced cooperative play, and are a ton of fun to play with a friend. I also like that the gun's cursors are visible on screen so you can compensate for any accuracy issues with the gun or its calibration.

Point Blank is another two-player game, though it's more competitive than cooperative. Here, you play a bunch of highly-competitive mini games that last for just a few moments. This is probably the most difficult game in the collection, and also the most sensitive to any accuracy issues, either human or machine in origin. I also really like playing it; it's a great game to play in short bursts and it's quite satisfying (as long as failure isn't too discouraging for you). I personally found some games nearly impossible if you have any accuracy issues at all, as there is no cursor on the screen and sometimes the target to hit on the screen can be quite small.

Time Crisis is only a single-player experience, but it's quite a good time. You play as Richard Miller, who was sent to rescue Rachel MacPherson, the daughter of a nation's President. Being a one-man army, you hide behind cover and pop out to shoot enemies, then hide again to reload. The hide/reload action is controlled by the included pedal, which really heightens the tension and helps manage ammunition also. You're also competing against a timer, so it's a good thing credits are free! There is a way to add a gun cursor before launching the game, though by default it's point and shoot like Point Blank. Whatever the case, it's really fun - enough so that my son, who really isn't into this kind of game, played it to completion - it's a good time.

The overall presentation of the G'AIM'E Gun console is a pretty positive experience. When you boot it up, for some reason that makes no sense, it shows an instructional video explaining how to connect the power, display, and controllers. The thing is, if you didn't know how to connect the power and display, you would never have seen this video. It's nonsensical... and you have to wait for at least some time before you can calibrate your guns. Getting this part right is really tricky, and while unfortunate, a necessary step given the way modern displays work.

You see, classic light guns, both arcade and otherwise, relied on the unique properties and scan rates of CRT (Cathode-Ray Tube) televisions, along with their instant response times. The methods they used were extremely accurate, and you could be really confident the problem was your fault for having bad aim. Unfortunately, no modern displays work similarly enough that there is any hope of that old technology working anymore. The desire to play that neat genre of games still holds strong, so fans and game designers have had to come up with other approaches in order to be able to play these classics on modern displays. While some approaches have used a sensor bar or other similar method, the G'AIM'E Gun uses only a simple camera inside of the gun itself to simulate the classic point and shoot.

When you calibrate your gun, you are given eight positions on the screen where you point it and shoot at each three times. The idea is that you can use almost any screen of almost any size, as long as you calibrate it carefully. The reality is that it's not quite so simple.

The first major limitation is that you can't have any other screens within visual range of the gun camera. For example, I tried using it at my desk, and I have dual monitors. My secondary monitor is to the left of my main one, and the left edges of my main screen were mostly unusable while playing. We are warned of this in the instructions, and my experience confirms this.

The second, and perhaps more significant limitation is that while the G'AIM'E Gun supports any size screen in theory, in practice it's not quite so simple. The larger the screen, the farther away you need to be for accurate calibration. From what I can tell, the gun camera needs to be able to see the whole screen at once. In my testing with three different screens of different sizes, only my 65" TV at greater than four meters away seemed to work reasonably well. Even then it can be a bit jittery, but usable. If you are any closer, calibration seems to complete fine, but the cursor just bounces all over the place. My room with my large projector screen is not deep enough for a consistent gaming experience as the cursor jitters constantly.

I also noticed that calibration is extremely sensitive to the slightest movements or angles. For example, I am left-eye dominant, but my wife and son are right-eye dominant. I tried calibrating the gun for them, but it was off so much they had to calibrate it again with their own eyes. Even that slight shift between my eyes was enough to really mess things up for them.

Another thing I noticed is that even slight changes in lighting can really mess with the calibration, making the game experience worse. During a recent play session, I calibrated the G'AIM'E and played for a bit before dinner while the sun was still out. I came back to it a couple of hours later after the sun went down (the system was left on) and it lost the accuracy it seemed to have earlier. They did release a firmware update, V4.0.3, to help with accuracy issues. It helped somewhat, but unfortunately after that upgrade I started experiencing audio drops. It's not consistent, but it does happen, which is a real bummer. I used to be able to connect it directly to my Pioneer Elite SC-77 receiver, but I had to connect it directly to my TV after the upgrade. Even then it would drop occasionally, but rarely enough that it's still usable.

On the plus side, once it's working it can be a ton of fun. The games themselves are excellent and absolutely worth playing. I also love that right on their homepage under downloads they offer 3D printable models for lens caps or gun holsters if you want to set them up at a station full time. That shows to me a love of the product and their community.

From a moral perspective, there is animated violence in all of the games. I do not recall any curse words. In Time Crisis, people are threatened with knives on screen, and if you are hit red slashes or bullet holes show up on screen to signify you were injured. Of course you are shooting targets, robots, or humans depending on the game or mode.

As a package, I really love the G'AIM'E Gun Ultimate pack. There was clearly love put into the product and package. What I find disappointing is you can seemingly do everything right and complete calibration and the games can still be almost unplayable. They should consider adding a (perhaps optional) calibration verification, or perhaps add some kind of on-screen border for the image processing to calibrate against. As it is, all of the included games use a 4:3 aspect ratio but the calibration is done 16:9 widescreen; is that harming the accuracy? Whatever the case, when it works it's awesome, but it can be difficult to get things working just right, even after the firmware upgrade that was supposed to fix things. It did help, but also caused me additional troubles with dropped audio.

At this point, I have to give the G'AIM'E Gun a conditional, cautious recommendation. If you have a long room with a smaller screen, then chances are you'll have a good experience. If you were hoping to point the gun close to the screen for easy hits like in the old days, that's sadly no longer possible. Hopefully improvements in calibration make the experience better, because the games are a blast. I also hope that homebrew developers figure out how to use these guns and do something even more awesome with them!