Blog: Let's Write About Guns (11/15/21 - 11/19/21)

Sports update: The Miami Dolphins won, bringing their record to 3-7. A 2-game win streak!

Monday, November 15th - Zapper Games

Today, I sat down and did write-ups on all the "zapper required" games. This includes...

• Wild Gunman
• Duck Hunt
• Hogan's Alley
• Gumshoe
• Gotcha! The Sport
• Freedom Force
• Shooting Range
• To the Earth
• Barker Bill's Trick Shooting

All of these games are relatively simple, which allowed me to play them all pretty extensively. My favorite thing I learned was that the Duck Hunt dog makes a return in Barker Bill's Trick Shooting! You can even shoot him if you want, although you will lose a life.

Tomorrow, I'll be playing and doing write-ups for the "zapper-optional" games.

Tuesday, November 16th - The Goriest NES Game

Today, I played through all of the NES games that are "zapper-optional." They are as follows.

• Operation Wolf
• The Adventures of Bayou Billy
• Track & Field II
• Mechanized Attack
• Laser Invasion
• The Lone Ranger
• Day Dreamin' Davey
• Baby Boomer
• Chiller

The first thing I noticed was Konami seemed to love the Zapper! Out of seven officially licensed "zapper-optional" games, four of them are Konami titles. My favorite was probably The Lone Ranger. It's got side-scrolling, top-down shooting, RPG elements, first-person shooting, and even poker! Definitely a hidden gem. 

The strangest was definitely Chiller. Chiller was originally released in 1986 by Exidy, an arcade game company known for its light gun games and the controversial 1976 arcade game, Death Race. Chiller was also controversial, and many arcades refused to purchase it due to the gore. 

In the game, you have to fulfill a "monster meter" by shooting just about anything and everything on the screen. This includes people in torture devices. It's gory for the sake of being gory. Well, surprisingly, it got an unlicensed NES port!

I will give Chiller some credit: It is the only zapper game that lets 2 players use zappers! 

I'm supposed to get my Bandai HyperShot tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Wednesday, November 17th - I have the worst luck sometimes

Last week, I talked about the issues I was having with my Analogue NT Mini. Here is a chart of what my initial plan was for capturing footage. 

The biggest hurdle with the zapper is that you can't use it on modern televisions. Luckily, the Analogue NT Mini has "Multi-Analog Out," meaning you can hook it up to a variety of inputs, such as S-Video, Component, Composite, etc. 

Unfortunately, my Multi-Analog Out was not working. I sent it off to Analogue for repairs. I doubt I'll get it back in time. So my next idea was to just use a standard NES instead of the Analogue NT Mini. The quality wouldn't be as good, but still fine with the upscaler.

Well, my NES decided to stop working as well! And this wasn't the standard "clean the 72-pin connector" kind of fix. I tried everything: cleaning, replacing the connector, snipping the 10NES chip, etc. It just doesn't work. Sometimes it won't even turn on. 

No problem, I thought, I'll use my AV Famicom! Well, guess again. The AV Famicom does not support the North American Zapper. 

Needless to say, today has been frustrating. Luckily, I have a buddy who has an Analogue NT Mini AND an NES. I'm going to borrow both and hope I can capture this footage!

I also managed to test out the Bandai HyperShot today. It's wild!

Thursday, November 18th - Puppy Surgery

Today was a somewhat low-key day. I mostly wrote the script. I'm hoping to finish by tomorrow. 

My pup, Kit, had surgery today as well to remove a tooth. She did great!

Friday, November 19th - Script is done

Here's the Bandai HyperShot. This thing looks...real!

Not much to say about today. I finished the script. Tomorrow, Kristin & I will sit down and edit. I'll have to work over the weekend on this video. It is being sponsored by SimpliSafe, so I have a hard deadline of December 10th. It's going to be tough, but I think I can do it! 

As Patrons, you'll see the ad-free version early.

Hope you have a great weekend!

- Norm