Super Scope
The Super Scope is the official Super NES light gun. It is shaped like a bazooka and is the successor of the vastly popular NES Zapper. The Super Scope was released in the European and US-markets (in Japan it was very limited due to a lack of consumer demand). It is a wireless gun, like the Sega Menacer, and is connected by an infrared receiver which plugs into the console. It has three buttons and a power switch and is powered by 6 AA batteries.
The Super Scope is popular with fans and game developers. It has appered inside several video games for the Super Nintendo and subsequent products. For example, In Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Gamecube, the Super Scope appears as an item that can be used against other players. It can shoot normal, small shots, and can charge up to three major shots, sending the opponent flying and resulting in a "Bull's Eye KO" bonus.
The Super Scope also appears in Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga as a weapon carried by the Sniper Bill enemy in Bowser's castle.
The Super Scope does not work if used on the NES in conjunction with a SNES to NES peripheral converter.
Physical Description
The gun body is a bazooka shaped device, about just under 2 ½ feet long. Located about midway on top of the barrel are two buttons and a switch. The first is "fire" button, which is used to fire at the enemies onscreen, and a "pause" button, which maps to the same button on the SNES controller. The switch is used to turn on the Super Scope, and to switch between regular or turbo mode. In the middle, on both the left and right hand side, are two clips on which you slide the sight. On the far end of the gun, on the bottom, is a 6" grip. On the grip is another, small button labeled "Cursor", which, moves the cursor in some games that use it (although the Super Scope 6 Game Pak does not).
On the end is the lens, slightly larger than the size of a quarter, which picks up the light from your TV, and right above that is the infared transmitter. The sight mount is shaped like a wide, very shallow "U", about five inches long. One end, that faces toward the shoulder mount end, has a round open cylinder holder, where the eyepiece goes. The other end has a short, narrow tube, which forms the sight when one looks through the eyepiece that is in-line across from it. The end of the eyepiece is very simple: it is a cylinder with the diameter of a quarter, with a removable rubber piece through which the shooter looks. If all is set up right, the shooter will see a small bit of the screen right through the sight. The sensor is a small box, 2 ½" by 2 ½" by 1", with a standard SNES controller cord attached. On the front is an oval-shaped black area, receding back from the two sides to a red sensor, about the size of a dime.
Technical details
The Super Scope does not use the more common (and inexpensive) technique of just having a light sensor that detects if the sensor is pointed at a bright spot of the screen, which would cause a flash to appear briefly when the light gun fire. Instead, the Super Scope monitors the actual scope in the tv to find the position of it with good precision. This however implies that modern LCD televisions are incompatible with the super scope due to the lack of a scope for the light sensor to monitor.
Legacy
The Super Scope was never very commercially successful. Critics blasted it as a bulky and cumbersome device that was difficult to use, especially in comparison to the lightweight NES Zapper. The device was also hurt by a lack of compatible software, although it is difficult to state as to whether a lack of software can be blamed for the Scope's unpopularity, or if the Scope's unpopularity simply scared off software developers.
Games
- Battle Clash
- Bazooka Blitzkrieg
- The Hunt for Red October (it is used for bonus games)
- Lamborghini American Challenge (it accesses a different game mode from the normal one)
- Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge - aka Battle Clash 2
- Operation Thunderbolt
- Super-Scope-6 cart (it is bundled with the hardware and features six games, under Lazer Blazer and Blastris categories)
- Terminator 2: The Arcade Game
- Tinstar
- X-Zone
- Yoshi's Safari