Widge (the real one)

When working on a Sinden Lightgun, whether you’re fitting a trigger mod or doing other maintenance, you’ll usually hear the same warning: be careful around the big capacitor in the handle . That capacitor powers the recoil solenoid, and when fully charged it holds around 20 volts . If you accidentally short its terminals with your hand or a tool, you could get a sharp (and very unpleasant) shock. But that raises a sensible question: how long does it take for the capacitor to discharge after you unplug the gun? It’s easy to say “wait before you open it up,” but what does “safe” actually mean in practice? I decided to put it to the test. Setting Up the Test To measure the discharge rate, I connected my multimeter directly to the capacitor’s terminals and watched the voltage over time. Since the capacitor was already flat, I first needed to charge it. Plugging the Sinden into my PC and enabling recoil in the Sinden software sent the voltage climbing almost instantly. Within just a ...

If you're a regular viewer of my YouTube channel then you must already know about Picmatic and their seminal full-motion-video arcade lightgun opus, Marbella Vice . If not, then maybe you should subscribe so you don't miss out in future! 😉 Marbella Vice was Picmatic ’s stylish crime drama that looked like it wandered out of a telenovela and into a shooting gallery. It was one of three such LaserDisc -based arcade games that the Spanish company developed, inspired no doubt, by the work of American Laser Games with their better known lightgun classics such as Mad Dog McCree , Crime Patrol , and Who Shot Johnny Rock . Tierras Salvajes , is of the same breed. It's Picmatic 's third and final foray into this world of live-action LaserDisc based shooters. This time set in the fan-favourite mythic American West, complete with saloons, shootouts, and sweeping plains where lawmen and outlaws settled things with bullets and bluster. The year is sometime after the American Civil...

Hey, everyone, it's good to see you. Thanks for joining me. Oh, wait. Sorry.  Obviously I can't actually see you. And you're not physically here with me. Those are just expressions, right? We use them all the time, even though they don't literally mean what they say.  That kind of thing can be confusing sometimes. And that's exactly what I want to talk about today, a common mix-up in the gaming world, specifically the way we use the word retro to describe our favourite old games like  Sonic the Hedgehog  and  Super Mario Brothers . And here's the thing...  those games aren't really retro at all .  Let me explain why. Super Mario Bros. When people talk about games like Sonic and Mario, they often call them  retro  because they're from the past and bring back memories. But just because something is old doesn't make it retro. That's a common misunderstanding.  And it all comes down to what retro really means By definition, retro means " imitati...

If you’ve had your 8BitDo SN30 or SF30 Pro controller for a few years, you might have noticed that the battery just doesn’t last like it used to. I ran into exactly that issue with several of my own controllers, so in late 2022, I made a YouTube video documenting the process of replacing them. This blog post is meant as an accompaniment or alternative to that video with advice to help you identify and source a compatible replacement battery. Even if you can’t find the original model anymore. The Original Battery The stock battery inside many 8BitDo SN30/SF30 Pro controllers is a GJ451860 lithium polymer (LiPo) cell, rated at 3.7V and 480mAh . That model number is important, and not just for identifying the battery. It’s actually the key to finding a compatible replacement. At the time I made my video, it was impossible to find a battery with that serial number. You may have more luck today, but if you struggle I can help. Just read on. Understanding Battery Model Numbers Here's the...

Right at the start of the 21st century, in the early twenty-nothings, before smartphones dominated casual gaming and before emulators became household tools, there was a simpler gaming frontier: the plug-and-play console. A self-contained controller, processor, and game library in one. Plug it into your TV and play instantly. I distinctly remember this time as being a period where lots of simple plug-and-play TV games saturated store shelves.  And Amongst these quirky relics lies a remarkable and somewhat overlooked title: This is Mission: Paintball , released in 2004 by Tiger Electronics ( or Tiger TV Games as declared on the game's title card ) , a Hasbro subsidiary. Unlike many of the plug-and-play units which offered arcade ports or retro rehashes, Mission: Paintball  was an original first-person shooter designed exclusively for television play. It was a full-fledged lightgun experience, simulating the thrill of competitive paintball with surprising ambition.  But it...

Who Shot Johnny Rock?  is an FMV light gun game originally released by American Laser Games in 1991. Like many of their titles, it ran on laserdisc hardware in arcades, using full-motion video to deliver a movie-like experience with live actors and pre-recorded scenes. You didn’t control a character in the traditional sense, your job was to watch the story unfold and shoot when the time was right. It was part of that early wave of "interactive movie" games, where gameplay was built around reacting quickly to on-screen events. The game is set in a stylized version of 1930s Chicago, and you play a private detective hired to solve the murder of a nightclub singer named Johnny Rock. Your client is Red, a classic femme fatale who brings you the case and sends you off into the city’s underbelly to track down suspects. There are four main ones, all with disease-themed nicknames: Measles, Mumps, Smallpox, and Lockjaw Lil, and each with a motive. The twist is that the killer is rando...

" Nintendo Magazine System " ( NMS ) was a British gaming magazine that began in 1992, as an offshoot from its parent magazine Mean Machines , which split into the Nintendo-centric " Nintendo Magazine System " while the Mean Machines title would live on as a Sega-specific publication, renamed " Mean Machines Sega ".      At that time, the British gaming magazine market was highly competitive with countless colourful covers demanding the attention of the casual newsagent patron, and so the newly created NMS was going to struggle to find its foothold in the market. It needed to do something to position itself above its rivals. The planned campaign involved adorning the magazine covers with gifts to entice buyers, with issue #1 offering a Game Boy keyring/clock. But it was issue #3, published in December of 1992 that set a new standard. Street Fighter II was already one of the biggest arcade games of the time having hit arcades in the previous year and...

Today we’re diving into a rarely discussed yet fascinating slice of video game media history: a Japanese VHS tape released in 1987, showcasing raw gameplay footage from SEGA’s legendary arcade aerial combat-sim, After Burner . This isn’t a fan edit. It’s not a "Let’s Play". It’s not even a strategy guide in the traditional sense. What you will find is part of a short-lived but curious trend in Japanese media from the mid to late 1980s: commercially released gameplay tapes on VHS. This is a commercially sold gameplay video, professionally recorded, edited, and distributed to an enthusiastic market during the golden age of Japanese arcades. What Is This Tape? This particular videotape showcases a spliced run of SEGA’s After Burner , one of the defining arcade experiences of the 1980s.  Well, perhaps it isn't After Burner , but in fact After Burner 2 .  As the video cassette case advertises the name After Burner , the title sequence in the video shows that this might just ...