GunCon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (July 2007)

The Guncon^[1] (often spelled "GunCon", a portmanteau of "Gun Controller"), known as the G-Con in Europe, is a family of light gun peripherals designed by Namco for the PlayStation consoles.

1 Background
2 Differences
3 Games supporting the Guncon
4 References
5 See also

[edit] Background

The first Guncon (G-Con 45 in Europe) was bundled with the PlayStation conversion of Time Crisis. A second version of the Guncon, known as the Guncon 2 (G-Con 2 in Europe), was bundled with the PlayStation 2 conversion of Time Crisis II. Time Crisis 4 came out for the Playstation 3 bundled with the Guncon 3^[2]^[3]^[4] ^[5] (G-Con 3 in Europe^[6]).

Prior to the Guncon, the Konami Justifier was the first light gun peripheral for the PlayStation and a few games support it. With the exception of the North American localization of Elemental Gearbolt and Maximum Force,^[7] games that support the Justifier are not compatible with the Guncon and vice versa.

[edit] Differences

The North American Guncon (gray; top) and the North American Guncon 2 (orange; bottom) for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, respectively.

Both the Guncon and Guncon 2 utilize the special memory chip behind the lens of the muzzle to change and refresh the image every time the player moves the muzzle to other areas of the screen—allowing the gun to be accurate every time the player utilizes it.

The Guncon 3 utilizes two infrared LEDs as markers, placed on the left and right sides of the screen. An image sensor in the muzzle tracks the markers as reference points for determining where the gun is pointing on the screen. As opposed to the Guncon and Guncon 2 (which were only compatible with CRT-based displays), the Guncon 3 supports a wide variety of display types, including LCD and HDTV. ^[8]

The Guncon featured a supplemental button on each side which performed only one additional function. The Guncon 2 had three buttons and a control pad on the back of the gun which the player can have more than one function.

The Guncon 3 features a "sub-grip", mounted underneath the barrel and extending to the side for use with the left hand. On the sub-grip is an analog stick and two shoulder buttons, like in a modern gamepad. At the back end of the gun barrel is another analog stick and two buttons underneath. Another two buttons are placed along the left side of the barrel.^{[citation needed]} The analog sticks allow the player to play first-person shooting games with manual aiming/firing of the light gun. In regards to appearance, all Japanese Guncon controllers feature a black coloring, though due to a US toy gun law passed in California a few years a ago, the US/PAL release of the Guncon 3 was changed to a bright orange plastic. This controller has been criticised for being uncomfortable for left-handed gamers.

[edit] Games supporting the Guncon

This section talks about various PlayStation games compatible with one or more versions of Namco's Guncon controller. See the complete list of light gun games on the PlayStation 2 for a complete list of light gun games.

[edit] Guncon compatible games

The Guncon 2 is not compatible with the Playstation as it has no regular PS-port but USB only, meaning the following games only work with the original Guncon.