Amidst the Odd Choices, Devolver Digital Decides to Create an Arcade Spin-off enter the dungeon series is perhaps one of the funniest. Arcade health may be better than it was a decade ago, but it’s also arguably not the hottest or most fertile place in gaming.
But credit goes to Devolver and developer Dodge Roll for crafting Gun House, a new light-gun shooter that looks great, albeit exclusive to the $6,000 arcade cabinet. I’m so glad it exists. But do you know what it really takes? Home port, guns and more.
House of the Gundead isn’t a new revelation – it was first revealed at E3 2019 – but this week, Devolver announced that their game is ready for launch. You can go to the Enter the Gungeon website and even order a cabinet – if you have the cash and the space to install a full-sized arcade cabinet with a 43-inch display. It looks great, and hopefully collectors with the money to burn it find their way into some arcades and bars. New arcade titles are relatively rare, and rare for anyone other than a handful of modern arcade specialists like Raw Thrills – so I’ll take it. This is good. Good job, Devolver. But…can we get a home port? Lightgun masterports were a staple of gaming in the ’80s and ’90s – but with the advent of HDTV, lightgun technology had problems and they started to die. A brief revival did happen on the Wii, but those pointer-based implementations were never quite the same. Neither is shooting in VR. But display issues mean any regression of this type is unlikely. However, everything has changed: we have technology.
Devolver knows this too. House of the Gundead’s arcade cabinet uses Sinden Light Guns. Sinden is an old friend of the iGamesNews – I’ve been using their gun in my house’s arcade cabinet to play emulated versions of classic arcade shooters like Point Blank and Time Crisis. These guns work well on modern flat-panel displays – and in some cases are actually arguably more accurate than the old-fashioned methods.
I’ve talked about Sinden before on the site. Long story short, it flips traditional systems on its head by putting a webcam in the barrel of a light gun and then drawing a small border around the game image on the display. Pair it with smart software, and the gun reads the boundary, using it to figure out exactly where it’s pointing.
After some calibration, it worked like a dream – even when standing at odd angles or whatever. It’s definitely a technological development that the light gun game deserves – but for whatever reason, it’s largely gone unnoticed by the wider industry.
Shot House, then, is a step in the right direction. Sinden is for nerds like me who have a home setup and want to play old light gun games in a cabinet, retro console or via emulation. But it had previously been licensed, by the folks behind the three-quarter scale Arcade1Up cabinet replica, to support the release of Big Buck Hunter and Terminator, with Time Crisis also rumored to be coming soon. PolyMega sells a plug-and-play Sinden gun for its vaguely retro hardware. Now Devolver joins the fray.
What we’re really waiting for, however, is for an intrepid company to step in and license the technology from the small British startup to get the Sinden pistol on the console, which plugs in via USB. It would be a natural fit for an old-school light gun guy to come forward – Sega or Namco committing to a new Virtua Gun or GunCon using Sinden technology. Think HD remakes that could be sold! Not to mention ports of new arcade games like House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn. I want it. I need it.
I’m excited to see Shot House; it’s fun to see developers and publishers try their hand at arcade originals, even if it seems like it’s mostly a marketing exercise. It’s great to see Sinden getting further recognition as well.
A port of this title that’s compatible with a PC mouse seems like a no-brainer anyway – and it’s compatible with Sinden guns. In fact, that’s probably how the official cabinet works. But the return of domestic light guns is long overdue, especially now that the publisher has devised an entirely new light gun shooter. Technology is no longer an excuse.. can we hurry up?