If you’re pretty deep into the gaming / tech rabbit hole on social media, you’ll have likely seen dozens of adverts for different “retro consoles”, usually little handheld devices pre-loaded with a ton of golden age arcade games. Some of them are pretty great, while most are inferior Temu clones of the real thing. It’s my experience with these that first made me sceptical of the G’aim’e Light Gun, a retro console with a difference.
For a start, the basic pack only comes with the one game – though it is a certified banger from back in the day. Any gamer over a certain age will likely have memories of playing light gun games in arcades in their younger days, and Time Crisis is among the most fondly-remembered. It was excellent – and bastard hard. I refuse to believe any but the rich kids with pockets bulging with coins could have finished it in one sitting. I certainly never did.
If you pick up the special editions of G’aim’e, though, you’ll also find them loaded with other titles, with the Ultimate Edition (which is what I’ve been using) pre-loaded with Time Crisis, Point Blank, and Steel Gunner 1 and 2. Now don’t get me wrong: these haven’t been remastered or worked on at all. They look and move just as they did in the 90s, and so presenting them to modern teens is like showing them a dial phone or a T-Rex skull. That said, my kids did have a blast with it.
That’s partly because the G’aim’e is really easy to plug in and play. There are two guns in the box, coloured bright blue and orange, a pedal for reloading and moving out of cover ((depending on the game), and the console itself, an unassuming little black box that nestled into my living room setup like it had always been there.
When you first start up there’s a short tutorial, followed by calibrating the guns. While the tutorial is skippable after the first time, you will have to go through the calibration every time. It doesn’t take more than 30 seconds, but it still became oddly tiresome after a few sessions. Also, be aware that you need some serious floor space to play the G’aim’e; not because you move around, but because to properly use the guns they need to be able to “see” the whole of your TV screen. The bigger the telly, the more distance you’ll need to make them work.
The Ultimate Edition has a fairly hefty price point for what it is, though you do get a bunch of Time Crisis collectibles in the box. The selection of games does seem small though, and while I had fun with Time Crisis in particular, my kids were burned out on it after a few days, the little philistines that they are. I just kept finding myself wishing it shipped with House of the Dead, or the stone-cold Nintendo classic that is Duck Hunt.
As a potential party piece or just something to do instead of the usual evening of AAA gaming, the G’aim’e Light Gun is a cool device. The guns feel suitably weighty, fitted with just enough buttons to navigate the minimal menus. They even labelled the Continue button as the “Insert Coin” button, which I appreciated even though modern kids barely know what a coin is, let alone a continue. To suggest the G’aim’e is a nostalgia farm for 40-year-olds isn’t entirely unfair. It’s also no bad thing, as my (successful) efforts to finally complete Time Crisis have proved.
So it’s not cheap, but I’d recommend at least the Premium Edition of G’aim’e if you want to get your money’s worth. And I would recommend it, as well, even if you do need a lot of room to play it, as it’s a solid, fun little window into the past and makes me wish some crazy company would devise a modern-day light gun system and somehow let me play Doom: The Dark Ages and Halo on it. A guy can dream, I guess.