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Simply shoot at the screen and let the zombie blood splash on the spot, and you can be as happy as if you were hit by magic. As a young child, I often walked through the neon arcade area, ignored the "Resolve the Crisis" and "Bubble Dragon", searched for the screens that were occupied by zombies, even if they were exploded by zombies, and refused to leave the "House of Death" machine after starting to read seconds, waiting for my parents to buy game coins to give me another round. To this day, I still remember the rush and anxiety of both dying with my father in the last level, waiting for my mother to exchange game currency for us to continue playing. All these good memories tell me one thing, that is, NS may not be suitable for playing light gun shooting games.
Players can aim with the joystick in NS handheld mode, or they can play with a Pro gamepad or even Joy-con's gyroscope. However, as an arcade version of the old player, the choice is self-evident. I sat down on the couch, grabbed a Joy-con and started the game. The game's graphics are completely on the average of the current genre, but the reset soundtrack and retro interface still made me appreciate it for a while. The first impression of the game was really good, but after encountering the first zombies in the game, I realized that something was not quite right.
By default, shooting with Joy-con is stress-free. I could have shot the zombies well in the game, but the cursor on the screen didn't follow my aim. I put my hand in one position and pressed the A key to shoot a few shots, and then I had to recalibrate the crosshairs with the X key, and I had to come every few seconds. Unconsciously, the number of times the alignment was calibrated was even greater than the number of reloads. But for me the game is still interesting, after all, the nostalgia attracts me through the corridors of the haunted house, and the problem of the handle can be slightly reversed. However, it is still difficult to fight bosses and shoot small items, so it can no longer be invisible.
A lot of players play House of the Dead with a Pro gamepad, and I can do the same. However, if I did this, it wouldn't taste like "Dead House" for me. Even if I spent an hour adjusting the aiming sensitivity to adapt to the operation, I still couldn't escape the problem of having to calibrate the lens for a while. These are all small details and small problems in the game, but when they are concentrated together, the game experience has dropped a lot. The controller did not use the trigger button that came with it as the shooting button, but instead used the A button setting to make me less interested, and the 40-minute game flow gradually lost its fun.
There are so few light gun shooters ported to NS, and I can understand why. For games like Super Mario: Odyssey, Joy-con's built-in sensors are enough, but the NS itself doesn't have an external sensor like the Wii or a camera like playStation Move, so it's hard to play a light gun shooter. NS lacks the key hardware to play light gun shooter games, can not meet the needs of the game, and there is no solution for the time being.
After playing House of the Dead: Remake once, I spent the next few days looking for NS-adapted lightgun game peripherals. To my surprise, there are still not a few players who have the same demands as me, probably because the well-known light gun game IP of "House of the Dead" recently logged into NS. However, the peripherals that are truly available cannot be said to be completely absent, but only few. One of the peripherals I searched, which appeared to be a hybrid of a rifle and a shotgun, placed the left Joy-con on the handlebar and the right Joy-con horizontally near the crosshairs. It also comes with a mystery game called Chicken Range, but some manufacturers have made similar models of peripherals and sold them for some time. Overall, this peripheral is some sort of simplified version of Wii Zapper, but in essence it's just a matter of putting Joy-con on two pieces of plastic, and players still have to use Joy-con to manipulate the game.
Peripherals like Zapper and Nyko Perfect Shot stand out in that they really have triggers. Even from the internal structure analysis, these triggers are actually ordinary buttons, but with a small bump of a bend, but just this change, you can let the player not have to worry about adapting to the hardware, simply enjoy the pleasure of aiming and shooting. There is currently no similar alternative to NS. However, maybe House of the Dead: Remake will really attract the attention of manufacturers and let them start making some accessories. However, the lack of sensors in the NS itself will still add difficulty to the design.
Ever since House of the Dead disappeared from the local arcade shop, I've been trying to find ways to revisit the series. The PC version of House of the Dead 2 has been on my radar for a while. This game belongs to the mouse can be played. Around 2010, when I was just in love, my other half just happened to buy a new Wii, and I just happened to see "House of the Dead 2 & 3: Return" and wanted to see if I could play it. As a result, my luck was really bad, so many games, just this one did not work properly, I also lost the opportunity to play "House of the Dead" with Wiimote. Just a few days after I played Remake, I was on my way to the mall to see a movie, just past the place where the House of the Dead 2 arcade machine was placed. Every time I pass there, I still hear all kinds of arcade games, and now I feel more and more strange, but I can still bring my thoughts back to when I played "House of the Dead".
I'm really naïve to think that I can get back the joy of the game with a pair of Joy-cons, and I shouldn't have given The House of the Dead: Remake such high expectations. In my opinion, the game experience of "Remake" is completely incomparable with the arcade version of that year, and it can be said that it is completely unrelated. If this game can be ported to other consoles (after all, the slogan is "NS version of the first release"), such as on playStation Move, it may be much better. But a new generation of young people seems to be less interested in light gun shooting unless it's put into VR.
Time flies, and the light gun shooting category is no longer glorious. I can't help but think that if I want to get back to the feeling of playing arcades, I am afraid that I can only go back to the past, trace the footsteps of the previous era, and return to the era when the game hardware is full of tricks. I just bought a Wii last week, and House of the Dead 2 & 3: Return to The Return edition and Nyko Perfect Shot are also in delivery, I'm afraid that only with these old machines can I regain a little bit of the feeling of playing arcade.
Translation: Brexit Admiral
Edit: Tonkotsu ramen