Luckily all the multi game options and cracked PC based arcades is making it easier as you can just buy each bit of hardware once. If money was no object then there would be no PCBs left on ebay.Īll you can do is keep an eye out for a deal on what you want and prioritize. With the right screen and Namco's amplified gun sensors, a 70"-100" 4:3 screen is no issue.Ĭlick to expand.Most of us are in the same boat. I bought a pair for my basement recently. If the goal is to play them on a larger screen then a CRT projector is the way to go IMO. Old light gun games look an play best with a real light gun on a CRT. Personally, I think playing Time Crisis 1, 2 and 3 on HD flat screen monitors is the wrong goal. The only way you'd be able to use a Time Crisis 4 gun to play TC3 or TC2 would be a custom USB adapter / converter (like a UHID but for a Namco 246) or. Compatibility with Time Crisis 4 would have been a typo. It could have been maintenance issues too as used Crisis Zone guns always seem to be broken.īTW, those "Named" Time Crisis guns are just Chinese knock-offs of the regular Time Crisis 1, 2 and 3 guns. My guess as to why they didn't use CCD guns for TC4 would be compatibility issues with monitors that have anti glare / anti reflective coatings. The OMZ guns were an easy off-the-shelf 3rd party option. The company seemed to lose it's taste for developing it's own custom hardware in that period.
Time Crisis 4 is a 480p game so they wouldn't have been able to use the same light gun I/O as TC 2 and 3.
When you play it on the PS2 with a real light gun the flashing is a bit much. I always thought that the only reason that Crisis Zone used a camera set-up was because it's a machine gun only game. It's weird that the CCD option exists for Time Crisis 3 given that the camera version cabs still appear to use the same CRT rear projection TVs as the regular deluxe version.
I'd say it's probably even more expensive than the CCD camera set-up. Plus, I’m guessing no operator wanted to pay more for the camera technology opposed to the easy to “fix” optical technology version.Ĭlick to expand.Time Crisis 4 (and all of Namco's subsequent HD shooters) use the same OMZ IR guns as Sega. I guess that one reason they’re so rare is because they (the gun sensor and cabinet cameras) break/fail so easily.
The manual for the camera version uses the rays pcb but I think time crisis 3 is also compatible with crisis zone’s I/O pcb, with a different eprom? What I’m most curious about this setup is if it still needs a crt or projector screen for the cameras to register the shots or can a led/lcd screen can be used? I wish I had a complete crisis zone set or vampire night pcb to test this theory out as well. It uses an optical sensor instead of a camera. Plus, time crisis 4 doesn’t uses optical gun technology.
This caught my attention because this light gun was in the original design opposed to the upgrade version time crisis 4 uses. Hopefully we don’t have to worry about this longer as I have some hope that the sinden light gun and the OSSC can make these games playable on a modern flat screen and with great accuracy!Ī Chinese seller on eBay is selling the cabinet cameras for time crisis 3, the only thing I don’t see for sale are the guns themselves until they posted some guns that claim to work for time crisis 1-4. Obviously, as IR tech became more cheaper and widely used, camera tech wasn’t going to stick around for much longer. Plus, I’m guessing no operator wanted to pay more for the camera technology opposed to the easy to “fix” optical technology version.Īs for Namco not sticking with camera technology, I guess that IR was far more cheaper and easier to work with than camera setups.
Click to expand.A Chinese seller on eBay is selling the cabinet cameras for time crisis 3, the only thing I don’t see for sale are the guns themselves until they posted some guns that claim to work for time crisis 1-4.