Gadgetory

there are plenty of different kinds of video games out there but throughout the history of gaming a huge part of the appeal of games has been the fact that many of them allow us to pretend to shoot at things and although we do most of our shooting these days with a gamepad or a mouse and keyboard a lot of you might remember the days when we had actual replica guns to fire at the screen I'm talking of course about light guns those things that you could use with your NES to play duck hunt and just shoot that stupid dog over and over again because he keeps laughing at you but even though light guns are a rarity these days they were a little ahead of their time back in the mid 1980s considering that the concept of controlling your video games by pointing something at the screen didn't really take off again until Nintendo introduced the Wii in 2006 however the light gun actually has a history that goes way back before home video games in fact all the way back to 1936 with a contraption called the Seberg ray o light that appeared as a wooden cabinet containing you guessed it a mechanical duck with a tube attached to it that could sense light a rifle that came with it fired a light beam that would make the duck fall mechanical light gun games like these eventually gave way to arcade games that used a light gun that worked with CRT monitors which found their way into the home as accessories for consoles like the Ness and Sega Master System so when you pointed your nest zapper or Sega light phaser at the screen and fired at a criminal a waterfowl or whatever the case may be the screen would very briefly go blank then redraw only the targets as white blocks the light gun could then detect whether it was pointed at one of the white areas and that if so the game registered a hit later light guns like the Nintendo Super scope which looked like something you might use to invade a small country defended by a clone army of Marcus Fenix allowed for greater precision by detecting the change in brightness at a certain point on the screen once it was refreshed to figure out where the gun was pointed but hold on a second the way that light guns work sounds pretty straightforward so why have they gone out of style oh well sometimes as technology moves forward stuff gets relegated to history's dustbin simply because it was designed to work with something else older which is exactly what happened to our beloved light guns you see old CRT screens had much lower display lag than modern LCDs when LCDs started to dominate the market they offered crisp images and low power consumption not to mention being lighter and thinner but they've never been as quick as two monitors due to fundamental differences in how they work light guns don't work with modern screens because their display leg is just too high so they can't draw those white targets or change the brightness quickly enough for the gun to register it and even though the light gun is considered a retro piece of tech the quick response that you could get from a light gun paired with a CRT actually hasn't been matched by modern solutions like the Wii Remote which tend to have a much higher very perceptible latency when you're pointing them around but of course if you can't still play games with them you can at least use your light guns as accessories for your next Halloween costume just don't try to walk through airport security with one speaking of airport security if you want so much knowledge it can be considered dangerous maybe check out lynda.com/latoya view can watch and learn from top experts who are passionate about teaching they've got thousands of video courses that you can stream or watch on demand on your smartphone or on your tablet or whatever the case may be and you can learn on your own schedule at your own pace you can browse course transcripts to follow along or search for an answer that you missed or skip to that in the video you can take notes as you go and refer to them later you can create and save playlists of courses that you want to share with your friend colleagues and team members so you can all take whether it's your hobby or your career to the next level with lynda.com they've got topics from digital photography to video editing to business to productivity applications all kinds of things and their plans start at just 25 bucks a month so head over to lynda.com and sign up for your free 10-day trial at the link in the video description thanks for watching guys if you liked this video hit the like button if you disliked it though hit that dislike button it makes us sad but otherwise doesn't hurt us too much leave a comment if you have suggestions for future fast as possible and don't forget to subscribe and follow all of our channels here on tech quickie over at Linus tech tips and channels superfund we've got a great video over on channel superfund you should go check that out right now if you're looking for something else to watch