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Super Scope

SNES light gun peripheral From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Super Scope
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For the game included with the peripheral, see Super Scope 6.

The Super Scope (Japanese: スーパースコープ, romanized: Sūpā Sukōpu), known as the Nintendo Scope in Europe and Australia,[1] is a light gun peripheral created by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is able to aim and fire at targets on a screen by connecting to a small infrared receiver box placed on top of the television. The peripheral was released in 1992 and packaged with the video game Super Scope 6. However, only twelve games were released that were compatible with the device.

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European model with orange firing button
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Overview

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Design

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The inside of the Super Scope

The Super Scope is a bazooka-shaped device, just under 2 ft (61 cm) long.[1] Unlike its predecessor, the NES Zapper, the Super Scope does not use a wired connection to the system and instead requires six AA batteries for power.[1] Located about midway on top of the barrel are the "Fire" button, the "Pause" button, and the device's power switch, which can also be used to activate turbo fire.[2] In the middle on either side are two clips for attaching the sight.[2] At the far end of the gun, on the bottom, is a 6 in (15 cm) grip with another button labeled "Cursor"; holding this button and pressing "Fire" twice will reset any game to the title screen.[3]

On the end is the infrared receiver lens, approximately 1 inch (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 Super Scope comes packaged with a small infrared receiver, 2.5 in × 2.5 in × 1 in (6.4 cm × 6.4 cm × 2.5 cm) in size, with a standard Super NES controller cord attached. On the front is an oval-shaped black area, receding back from the two sides to an infrared transmitter about the size of a dime. The receiver must be placed above the screen and connected to the system's second controller port for play.[4]

Functionality

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The receiver box that plugs into controller port, meant to sit on top of the TV

The Super Scope makes use of the scanning process used in cathode-ray-tube monitors, as CRTs were the only widely used TV monitors until the early 2000s. In short, the screen is drawn by a scanning electron beam that travels horizontally across each line of the screen from top to bottom. A fast photodiode will see any particular area of the screen illuminated only briefly as that point is scanned, while the human eye will see a consistent image due to persistence of vision.[1]

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 and a 1 signal when it does not. Inside the console, this signal is delivered to the PPU, which notes which screen pixel 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.[1] Most licensed Super Scope games include a calibration mode to account for both electrical delays and maladjustment of the gunsight.[5]

The Super Scope ignores red light, as do many guns of this type because red phosphors have a much slower rate of decay than green or blue phosphors.[5] 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 or LCDs) that continuously light each pixel.[1]

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History

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The Super Scope was released in North America and the PAL region in 1992, followed by a limited release in Japan in 1993.[2][6] The peripheral came bundled with the video game Super Scope 6, which was created to demonstrate the device's functionality.[2]

Compatible games

Only twelve games were released that featured Super Scope compatibility.[2] Certain games released after the Super Scope—such as Yoshi's Island and Kirby Super Star—display a warning message indicating that the game is incompatible if it detects the receiver is plugged in.[7] All titles require the Super Scope unless otherwise noted.

Mario & Wario was also planned to support the accessory, but this was dropped before release.[8]

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Legacy

In response to the Super Scope, Sega would release their own light gun peripheral for the Sega Genesis, the Menacer, later the same year.[9]

A Super Scope was used as a prop in the live-action Super Mario Bros. film (1993), representing King Koopa's "Devo gun". Images from the live-action Super Mario Bros. film were used to promote the Super Scope's 1993 release in Japan.[6][10]

During the 1993–94 United States Senate hearings on video games, Senator Joe Lieberman would use the Super Scope as evidence of video games promoting violence among children, citing the peripheral's resemblance to a real assault weapon.[11]

The Super Scope is a recurring item in the Super Smash Bros. series, appearing in every game since Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001).[12][13] When picked up, it acts as a projectile weapon that fires a continuous stream of small shots when the attack button is tapped repeatedly, or fires one large shot if the attack button is held down.[14][15]

The Nintendo Switch game Splatoon 3 (2022) features a pair of in-game weapons, the S-BLAST '91 and S-BLAST '92, modeled after the Super Scope.[16][17]

See also

References

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