Ah, good ol' Duck Hunt. So many memories, so much wasted time. I miss those days. And I miss good ol' classic 8 bit Nintendo and Super Mario 1 through 3.
Those were good times I'll tell yah.
Especially those times when I would have to pass off my Amiga500 to my friend, and then I would go off to play 8-bit Nintendo, waiting for the hour to be up so I could get back behind the wheels of the Amiga......
I'm not sure if that's entirely accurate because I thought the Zapper worked fairly similar to all other light guns up through today, and I think I can use my Dreamcast light gun with House of the Dead 2 over a VGA connection to an LCD.
I should try this out. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
Comments
Anyhow, Google is your friend.
You should try it some time.
<a href="http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jul99/932797371.Eg.r.html"; target="_blank">http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jul99/932797371.Eg.r.html</a>;
and for the link-impaired:
[quote] bet you can't use the Nintendo Zapper Gun on a "Lap-Top" computer.
Back in the olden days, when there were real TVs (no not the program), they
had electron guns and Cathode-Ray-Tubes. And this is what was inside the
TV, shooting stuff back at you, and you didn't know it.
1) Here is how it works: In the older TVs (Non-LCD screens) there is an
"Electron Gun" that looks like a big light bulb. The function of this
electron gun is to use electricity and heat up an element, and boil off
electrons. A set of electro-magnetic coils then repel and direct the flow
of these loose electrons at a very high speed towards the inside of the TV
screen. This is all happening behind the TV tube glass. These electrons
are being generated in the back of the TV tube, and are shot directly out
towards you. What stops most of these loose and high speed electrons is
the front of the tube which is made up of very tiny capsules of phosphorous
material that momentarily give off light as they are hit by these loose
high speed electrons. You can actually see the tiny capsules that look to
be red, yellow, and blue. Your monitor is rated at xx dots per inch, which
means that there are xx of these clusters of red, yellow, and blue capsules
(called pixels - short for picture elements) in each linear inch of the
front of your computer monitor. If you look close enough, you can actually
see these pixels.
Well, as you guessed it, some of those nasty loose high speed electrons
make it past the phosphor screen and come straight at you. And you didn't
believe your mother when she said sit back from the TV screen or you will ?
Inside the Nintendo Zapper Gun or any such device (like a "light pen") is
a "detector". That's right. The Nintendo Zapper Gun does not actually
shoot anything out, but it actually gets hit by the TV's bullets that are
the loose high speed electrons which are generated in the back of the TV
where it gets really warm.
2) How does the Zapper Gun know where you aimed? The electrons are boiled
off. The magnetic field on the back repels and accelerates the electrons
towards the front. And then, there are guide electromagnets on the side
and the top/bottom of the tube. With precise timing and monitoring, these
guide electro-magnets can direct a very fine beam of loose electrons to
each of the red, yellow, and blue pixels. The back electro-magnet
determines how much energy that electron has when it hits the particular
pixel. By controlling and mixing the amount of high speed electrons going
into each of the primary color pixels, different colors can be made.
This beam is controlled to sweep from left to right horizontally, then go
down one row, then start the horizontal sweep from the left to the right
again, and so on. The exact location of the beam at any given time is
known by the TV circuitry. When you pull the trigger on the Zapper Gun,
the Nintendo system, then reads this information from the TV circuitry, and
checks to see if the gun has been hit by an electron beam or bullet. If
the Zapper gun has been hit by the electron beam, that means you were
aiming at the right spot when the sweep was going through, and you have a
direct hit. If the zapper gun is not hit by the electron beam, that means
that you must be aiming elsewhere on the screen, and it is considered a
miss.
3) The reason it will not work with LCDs: Liquid Crystal Displays, such as
those used on Lap-Top computers use a different technique to get light out
of pixels. They do not shoot high-speed electrons into your face, which is
what the Zapper Gun needs to function - and so the Nintendo Zapper Gun
probably will not work on your Lap-Top.
Yes I still sit too close to the TV screen.<hr></blockquote>
Those were good times I'll tell yah.
Especially those times when I would have to pass off my Amiga500 to my friend, and then I would go off to play 8-bit Nintendo, waiting for the hour to be up so I could get back behind the wheels of the Amiga......
Junior High was so fun, wasn't, it?
I should try this out. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />