If we take a trip on the wayback machine to 1986, the industry crash has begun to pass and while it hurt arcades, companies were still churning out a lot of games and sometimes those games broke new ground either via controls, gameplay or graphics. Cinematronics created such a game known as Danger Zone, which featured it’s monitor on a swivel where the image in-game was tracked with the movement of the monitor. Many have since forgot about this game but with a video that just popped up on youtube where a guy modified some model gun with an LCD monitor and a tracking unit so it would serve as a type of mouse controller for use on the PC. This also reminds me of the concept used in Namco’s Gunmen Wars which featured a kind of motion-tracked gun, although what you’ll see in the video below allows for greater movement around the room.
That gun setup on the video is awesome! I would love to give it a try.
Here is some gameplay footage of Danger Zone. You can’t see the cab, but you get the idea.
“If Danger Zone were made today” yeah it would because while graphics weren’t that advance at the time companies had to come up with really cool controller ideas and I think if they rereleased this it would be even better and it would certainly be something not very compatable to play in the home.
the VR game gun I can seen taken to the next level in lazer tagging e.g. you could look for ghost trying to each your partener and use the screen mounted on the gun to view the ghost and destoy it. it would be cool if namco did a large scale remark of “Golly Ghost” that would be too cool to miss out on.