Every NES owner remembers “Duck Hunt.” You'd fire the orange and gray NES Zapper gun at the screen and either knock off your feathered friends or suffer the sight of the dog mocking you with his high-pitched giggle when you missed.
As a packaged-in part of the NES itself, the Zapper is more widely remembered than its light gun successor, the bazooka-shaped, battery-gobbling Super Scope. After that plastic headache passed into video game history, Nintendo would wait until recently to release its next gun.
That new point-and-shoot peripheral, the Wii Zapper, isn't much of a gun on its own. It instead encases the Wiimote and nunchuk in a sleek, two-handled Tommy gun-like plastic sheath.
Inserting the two controllers into the Zapper is much more complicated than it should be. It's a small pain to wrap the nunchuk cord around the two tiny hooks beneath the detachable plate on the gun's underside, then snap the cord into two tinier slits under each end of the plate so it locks back into place.
The gun is also severely flawed ergonomically. The gun body is angled in such a way that it is far too awkward to grab the trigger handle with a straight wrist and hold the Zapper like its NES ancestor. And the two handles are spaced apart at a distance that permits only one comfortable grip - close to the body at the height of a person's torso. Raising it to your eyeline will probably result in some eventual shoulder pain from the unnatural positioning.
Were the Wii Zapper an entirely new peripheral that opened the system's doors to shooting games as the NES Zapper did for the NES, the above weaknesses would be less damaging.
But as “Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition” and “Metroid Prime 3: Corruption” have proven, the Wiimote and nunchuk is already a perfectly efficient point-and-shoot controller setup. Housing them within the Wii Zapper gives gamers the opportunity to strike a more authentic shooting pose at the cost of the smoothness of the original arrangement.
To demonstrate the Wii Zapper in action, Nintendo has bundled with it “Link's Crossbow Training,” a bare bones array of shooting galleries set in gorgeous scenes from “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.”
As part of the $25 package, the game is worth its weight in rupees. The stationary and moving targeting game play is simple and slightly addictive. But learning to maneuver Link with the Wii Zapper is a mild challenge that can be mastered after many minutes of play.
Ironically, you can nail higher scores in “Training” by leaving the gun behind and sticking to the Wiimote and nunchuk setup. With respect to the original NES light gun, the new Zapper is about as annoying as the “Duck Hunt” dog.
Staff writer David Wilcox reviews video games for The Citizen. He can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 245 or david.wilcox@lee.net
If you play
Game: “Link's Crossbow Training” with Wii Zapper
Score: 60 out of 100
Parental rating: Teen
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Wii
Price: $24.99
Features: 1 player
Life span: 1 hour
The final boss: As an introductory course in the Wii Zapper, “Link's Crossbow Training” is a brief bit of point-and-shoot fun best enjoyed without the hardware with which it comes bundled.
That new point-and-shoot peripheral, the Wii Zapper, isn't much of a gun on its own. It instead encases the Wiimote and nunchuk in a sleek, two-handled Tommy gun-like plastic sheath.
Inserting the two controllers into the Zapper is much more complicated than it should be. It's a small pain to wrap the nunchuk cord around the two tiny hooks beneath the detachable plate on the gun's underside, then snap the cord into two tinier slits under each end of the plate so it locks back into place.
The gun is also severely flawed ergonomically. The gun body is angled in such a way that it is far too awkward to grab the trigger handle with a straight wrist and hold the Zapper like its NES ancestor. And the two handles are spaced apart at a distance that permits only one comfortable grip - close to the body at the height of a person's torso. Raising it to your eyeline will probably result in some eventual shoulder pain from the unnatural positioning.
Were the Wii Zapper an entirely new peripheral that opened the system's doors to shooting games as the NES Zapper did for the NES, the above weaknesses would be less damaging.
But as “Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition” and “Metroid Prime 3: Corruption” have proven, the Wiimote and nunchuk is already a perfectly efficient point-and-shoot controller setup. Housing them within the Wii Zapper gives gamers the opportunity to strike a more authentic shooting pose at the cost of the smoothness of the original arrangement.
To demonstrate the Wii Zapper in action, Nintendo has bundled with it “Link's Crossbow Training,” a bare bones array of shooting galleries set in gorgeous scenes from “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.”
As part of the $25 package, the game is worth its weight in rupees. The stationary and moving targeting game play is simple and slightly addictive. But learning to maneuver Link with the Wii Zapper is a mild challenge that can be mastered after many minutes of play.
Ironically, you can nail higher scores in “Training” by leaving the gun behind and sticking to the Wiimote and nunchuk setup. With respect to the original NES light gun, the new Zapper is about as annoying as the “Duck Hunt” dog.
Staff writer David Wilcox reviews video games for The Citizen. He can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 245 or david.wilcox@lee.net
If you play
Game: “Link's Crossbow Training” with Wii Zapper
Score: 60 out of 100
Parental rating: Teen
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Wii
Price: $24.99
Features: 1 player
Life span: 1 hour
The final boss: As an introductory course in the Wii Zapper, “Link's Crossbow Training” is a brief bit of point-and-shoot fun best enjoyed without the hardware with which it comes bundled.
