Super Scope
Encyclopedia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, is the official Super Nintendo
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...
light gun
Light gun
A light gun is a pointing device for computers and a control device for arcade and video games.Modern screen-based light guns work by building a sensor into the gun itself, and the on-screen target emit light rather than the gun...
. It was released in the European and North American markets, with a limited release in Japan due to a lack of consumer demand. It is a wireless
Wireless
Wireless telecommunications is the transfer of information between two or more points that are not physically connected. Distances can be short, such as a few meters for television remote control, or as far as thousands or even millions of kilometers for deep-space radio communications...
gun and uses an infrared
Infrared
Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...
receiver which plugs into the right port of the console, comparable to the Menacer
Menacer
The Menacer is a lightgun created by Sega for the Mega Drive video game console in 1992, as a response to the Super Scope by Nintendo.The Menacer is made up of three sections which can be disassembled...
for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. It has two action buttons, a pause button, a power switch and is powered by six AA batteries
AA battery
An AA battery is a standard size of battery. Batteries of this size are the most commonly used type of in portable electronic devices. An AA battery is composed of a single electrochemical cell...
.
Physical description
The gun body is a bazookaBazooka
Bazooka is the common name for a man-portable recoilless rocket antitank weapon, widely fielded by the U.S. Army. Also referred to as the "Stovepipe", the innovative bazooka was amongst the first-generation of rocket propelled anti-tank weapons used in infantry combat...
-shaped device, just under 2 feet long. Located about midway on top of the barrel are two buttons, the orange "Fire" button and the grey "Pause" button, and a switch used to turn the Super Scope off or select regular or turbo mode. In the middle on either side are two clips for attaching the sight. On the far end of the gun, on the bottom, is a six inch grip with another button labeled "Cursor".
On the end is the infrared transmitter and the lens, approximately 1 inches (25 mm) in diameter, which picks up the light from a TV. The sight mount is shaped like a wide, very shallow "U", about five inches long. The end that faces toward the shoulder mount end of the Super Scope has a round open cylinder holder, where the eyepiece goes. The other end has a short, narrow tube, which forms the sight when one looks through the eyepiece that is in-line across from it. The end of the eyepiece is very simple: it is a cylinder with the diameter of a quarter, with a removable rubber piece through which the shooter looks. The sight is designed so that the aim will be correct at a distance of 3 metres (10 ft). The sensor is a small box, 2½" by 2½" by 1", with a standard SNES
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...
controller cord attached. On the front is an oval-shaped black area, receding back from the two sides to a red sensor about the size of a dime
Dime (United States coin)
The dime is a coin 10 cents, one tenth of a United States dollar, labeled formally as "one dime". The denomination was first authorized by the Coinage Act of 1792. The dime is the smallest in diameter and is the thinnest of all U.S...
.
All of the Super Scope games made by Nintendo have a soft-reset to the game's main title. This is accomplished by pausing the game, then, while holding CURSOR, the FIRE button must be pressed twice.
Detecting a target hit
The Super Scope makes use of the scanning process used in cathode ray tubeCathode ray tube
The cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen used to view images. It has a means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam onto the fluorescent screen to create the images. The image may represent electrical waveforms , pictures , radar targets and...
monitors, as CRTs were the only affordable TV monitors until the late 1990s. In short, the screen is drawn by a scanning electron
Electron
The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...
beam that travels horizontally across each line of the screen from top to bottom. A fast photodiode
Photodiode
A photodiode is a type of photodetector capable of converting light into either current or voltage, depending upon the mode of operation.The common, traditional solar cell used to generateelectric solar power is a large area photodiode....
will see any particular area of the screen illuminated only briefly as that point is scanned, while the human eye
Human eye
The human eye is an organ which reacts to light for several purposes. As a conscious sense organ, the eye allows vision. Rod and cone cells in the retina allow conscious light perception and vision including color differentiation and the perception of depth...
will see a consistent image due to persistence of vision
Persistence of vision
Persistence of vision is the phenomenon of the eye by which an afterimage is thought to persist for approximately one twenty-fifth of a second on the retina....
.
The Super Scope takes advantage of this in a fairly simple manner: it simply outputs a '0' signal when it sees the television raster scan
Raster scan
A raster scan, or raster scanning, is the rectangular pattern of image capture and reconstruction in television. By analogy, the term is used for raster graphics, the pattern of image storage and transmission used in most computer bitmap image systems...
and a '1' signal when it does not. Inside the console this signal is delivered to the PPU, which notes which screen pixel
Pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled....
it is outputting at the moment the signal transitions from 1 to 0. At the end of the frame, the game software can retrieve this stored position to determine where on the screen the gun was aimed. All licensed Super Scope games include a calibration mode to account for both electrical delays and maladjustment of the gunsight
Sight (device)
A sight is a device used to assist aligning or aim weapons, surveying instruments, or other items by eye. Sights can be a simple set or system of markers that have to be aligned together as well as aligned with the target...
.
The Super Scope ignores red light, as do many guns of this type, because red phosphor
Phosphor
A phosphor, most generally, is a substance that exhibits the phenomenon of luminescence. Somewhat confusingly, this includes both phosphorescent materials, which show a slow decay in brightness , and fluorescent materials, where the emission decay takes place over tens of nanoseconds...
s have a much slower rate of decay than green or blue phosphors. Since the Super Scope depends on the short persistence and scan pattern of CRT pixels, it will not function with modern displays (such as plasma screens
Plasma display
A plasma display panel is a type of flat panel display common to large TV displays or larger. They are called "plasma" displays because the technology utilizes small cells containing electrically charged ionized gases, or what are in essence chambers more commonly known as fluorescent...
or LCDs
Liquid crystal display
A liquid crystal display is a flat panel display, electronic visual display, or video display that uses the light modulating properties of liquid crystals . LCs do not emit light directly....
) that continuously light each pixel.
Games compatible with the Super Scope
- Battle ClashBattle ClashBattle Clash, known in Japan as , is a mecha-themed light gun shooting game produced by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems and released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in...
- Bazooka BlitzkriegBazooka BlitzkriegBazooka Blitzkrieg is a video game software released for the Super NES which makes use of the Super Scope light gun. It was released in 1992 by Bandai....
- The Hunt for Red OctoberThe Hunt for Red October (video game)The Hunt for Red October is video game based on the movie The Hunt for Red October. It was released in 1990 and was available for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super NES and Game Boy.-Gameplay:...
(it is used for bonus games) - Lamborghini American ChallengeLamborghini American ChallengeLamborghini American Challenge is a game released in 1993 by Titus Interactive. The game was published for the Super Nintendo, Atari ST, Amiga CD32, Game Boy, PC-DOS and Commodore 64....
(it accesses a different game mode from the normal one) - Metal Combat: Falcon's RevengeMetal Combat: Falcon's RevengeMetal Combat: Falcon's Revenge is a mecha-themed light gun shooting game released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in produced by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems...
- Operation Thunderbolt
- Super Scope 6Super Scope 6, known as Nintendo Scope 6 in Europe and Australia, was the title Nintendo bundled with the Super Scope for the Super NES. As the name suggests, the cartridge contains six games that require the Super Scope to play.-Title screen and calibration:...
(bundled with the hardware) - T2: The Arcade GameTerminator 2: Judgment Day (arcade game)Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the name of an arcade game released by WMS Industries in 1991. The game is loosely based on the film of the same name...
- Tin Star
- X-ZoneX-ZoneX-Zone is a game released in 1992 by Kemco for the Super NES. It was one of the few games to support the Super Scope light gun. The players assume the role of a soldier in flying power-armor assigned to destroy an army of malfunctioning defense robots commanded by a sentient bio-computer in its...
- Yoshi's SafariYoshi's SafariYoshi's Safari, known in Japan as is a video game made for the Super NES in 1993.Yoshi's Safari takes advantage of the Super Nintendo's mode 7 capability, which allows backgrounds to be transformed by rotating or stretching it.-Gameplay:...
See also
- BatterUPBatterUPBatterUP is a "24-inch foam-covered plastic" baseball bat-shaped controller manufactured for the personal computer, SEGA Genesis, and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System by Sports Sciences Inc....
– The baseball bat controller for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System - MenacerMenacerThe Menacer is a lightgun created by Sega for the Mega Drive video game console in 1992, as a response to the Super Scope by Nintendo.The Menacer is made up of three sections which can be disassembled...
– The lightgun accessory for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive - NES ZapperNES ZapperThe NES Zapper, also known as the Beam Gun in Japan, is an electronic light gun accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Japanese Famicom. It was released in Japan for the Famicom on and alongside the launch of the NES in North America in October 1985...
- The lightgun accessory for the NESNintendo Entertainment SystemThe Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...