It was only a matter of time before Nintendo pulled a gun on us. After all, they popularized the whole videogame “light gun” craze with the NES Zapper, a classic Duck Hunt peripheral from back in the day that seemed--to wee me, anyway--to be possibly magic (then again, so did our first remote control).
Two decades later, Nintendo revived the name for the new “Wii Zapper.” But unlike the original, this has no magical innards. It’s simply an empty plastic shell that the wiimote and nunchuck controllers slip into. Still, it looks enough like a two-handed Tommy gun--albeit of some sci-fi variety--that family-friendly Nintendo told the Washington Post “we don't think it even really looks like a gun" while the paper reported a grandparent snarking "why don't they enclose an application to the NRA in every box as well?”
Of course, both positions are patently asburd. It might not look like something you’d see fired in Iraq, but if it didn’t provide the sensation of actual shooting than what would be the point? And Gramps, you probably had a BB gun when you were a kid, no? So stop freeting about controller shapes.
Back to the Zapper, I found using both hands did seem to steady my aim--and even controlling movement with the nunchuck was relatively easy, though the Zapper will likely revive “rail shooters” in the short term because they're about aim, not movement.
It comes with the fun pack-in game Link's Crossbow Training, which is a straightforward point-and-shoot using the Zelda: Twilight Princess engine where you shoot targets, skeletons, goblins and skeet-like flying skulls. It’s a blast, albeit a simplistic one.
At only $25, it's arguably worth it for the Link game alone and if you’re a fan of arcade-style shooters there's some Zapper-specific titles like Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 and the upcoming House of the Dead 2 and 3 compilation.
But the inability to easily push the face buttons will prove problematic--it doesn’t really work with the control schemes of, say, Resident Evil 4 or Metroid Prime 3, especially the latter which also requires controller movement to twist knobs and open doors.
Shooters are much more complex than they were in the Duck Hunt days and so for those games, for the time being, the Zapper misses its target.