As the year comes to a close, I thought it’d be a good idea to look back at what this year brought us in terms of new significant developments or releases regarding light gun gaming and talk a little bit about them to have everything collected in one place. This will cover hardware and software, both at home and in arcades, so here’s a look at the new highlights from this year.

Arcade Releases:

Goldstorm Pirates

In July of this year, Namco ended up rolling out the worldwide release for their first arcade light gun game since 2016’s Point Blank X, with this spiritual follow-up to 2014’s Deadstorm Pirates. I was recently able to play through the entire game at a local arcade and it’s a blast, especially with friends. It plays very similarly to Deadstorm and has very nearly identical mechanics, but with some fun improvements and even more colorful visuals.

The arcade cabinet is full of bells and whistles, with air jets, a hydraulic moving seat, and all kinds of haptic feedback across the whole cabinet, making it feel more like an amusement park ride in the best way. Since it’s so new, there’s only a handful of them out in the wild so far, so check your local arcades to see if it pops up and enjoy this ride for yourself.

Contra Burst

Similar to Namco releasing a new arcade light gun game this year after a very long hiatus, Konami did the same, with Contra Burst, released around May of this year, which is their first light gun game since 2014’s Silent Scope: Bone-Eater. This is a light gun take on the long running Contra series, and features bosses, enemies, and locations from the franchise, wrapping it into a fast-paced light gun game, and oddly enough, this is also a ticket redemption game, meant for modern arcades with prize counters.

As far as anyone can tell, this is a Round1 arcade exclusive, so you’ll probably only find it in their locations, and it’s supposedly an upgrade kit for an old Bomberman ticket redemption game from a few years ago, so if you remember seeing that Bomberman game at a Round1 in the last few years, it’s probably a Contra Burst machine now.

Resident Evil 2: Dead Shot

Back in July, a location test of this new light gun game based on 2019’s Resident Evil 2 remake randomly showed up at an arcade in the UK, where it stayed for about 4 months, as word started to spread on the internet, with one test location in the US also showing up around early November. Capcom and Bandai Namco have announced there will be further location tests in Japan early next year and hopefully a wide release after that, if all goes well.

People who got a chance to play the game said it was fun and challenging, with a Time Crisis-style recoil handgun, vibrating floorboard, and air jets that blow as you’re playing for more immersion. The one known location in the US is located at a Round1 location in the Chicago area, and while I haven’t gotten to play it myself yet, I’m hoping it’ll either get more location tests here or a wide release sooner than later. Since I’m also a big fan of the Resident Evil series in general, we’ll definitely be covering more news on this one as it becomes available.

Desert Chase

Released by a newer Chinese arcade developer (Blue Motion Games) early in the year, Desert Chase is a 4 player light gun game that sits each player in a seat with their own gun for high-speed vehicle-chase shooting action, but due to the difficulty and increased cost of getting very large items like sit-down arcade cabinets shipped to other parts of the world from China, this one hasn’t been seen in the wild very much, at least in the Western world.

It’s also reportedly a very short game, being less than around 10 minutes in length and also features a moving seat and air jets to make it feel more like a theme park ride, but seems to be pretty fun if you can actually find a cabinet. There is at least one confirmed location in the US, at a Chuck’s Arcade (the arcade spinoff of Chuck E. Cheese,) so if anyone has actually played this, let us know how how it played!

Cyberpunk 2077: Turf Wars

Based on the popular 2020 video game, Turf Wars isn’t exactly a light gun game, since it features airsoft guns and physical mechanical targets, but it still functions like a classic light gun shooting gallery, and deserves a mention here. It uses the physical targets in conjunction with a projector that will display different images on each physical target, changing up the gameplay and introducing more challenges such as avoiding innocents and bonus shots/multipliers.

The game was exclusive to Dave & Busters arcade locations until August of this year, but they may have started showing up at other arcades since then. I personally played one at D&B in the US and it was a lot of fun, so check around in your area to see if one shows up.

On Target

Early in the year, Sega also released a new ticket redemption shooting gallery game that’s maybe a little closer to a light gun game than something like Cyberpunk Turf Wars, since it doesn’t use physical projectiles to hit its targets, but it does use physical, mechanical targets. The targets are triggered by a laser light emitted from the guns, and this one allows up to 4 players simultaneously, to compete for higher scores and more tickets.

I don’t have any confirmed locations where you can play one of these, but it seems like a lot of fun and a callback to the light-based mechanical shooting galleries I grew up playing at theme parks in the 1980s and 90s or favorites like Namco’s Quick & Crash. Let us know if anyone has found one of these in the wild!

Cannonball Jam

Another Chinese ticket redemption game from the same creators as Desert Chase with no known locations in the West also launched earlier this year, aimed at younger kids, and this one uses physical foam balls to shoot at the screen instead of standard light gun aiming. If anyone has found one of these, please let us know!

Home releases:

Pteropus

Pteropus is the name of a real animal, one of the largest families of bats on the planet that’s most often found in South Asia and Australia which has been close to the brink of extinction, and someone decided to make a spooky and cute light gun game for the NES all about them! The game is a pretty simple shooting gallery style, where you have to shoot the bad bats and avoid shooting the good ones in order to save the species, but it’s great to see developers still making light gun games for old hardware.

This can be played on modern NES emulators or on the actual hardware (if you have a flash cart solution,) and it only costs a few dollars to buy from the developer. Check this out if you’re a fan of retro light gun stuff, as it’ll provide several stages of fun as well as supporting an indie developer’s work.

Undercover Shot

Undercover Shot is also a new light gun game for the NES, with an even simpler game design than Pteropous, but this time it’s based around a multiplayer element. Player 1 uses the standard controller in the first slot to choose a color for their character, which is hidden from player 2 (the light gun player,) and player 2 has to figure out which color player 1 chose and shoot them. Player 1 can move the character around the screen with the controller to confuse player 2, making this sort of like Among Us with a light gun.

This is another fun little experiment from a solo developer and only costs mere pennies to buy from them, so check this out if this sounds like a fun premise to you or you just want to support indie light gun developers!

Duck Hunter

As we covered a few months ago at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, there’s recently been light gun functionality added to the Intellivision consoles from the 1980s for the first time thanks to a new device called the IntyNES, which allows the use of NES controllers on the console, including the Zapper. Duck Hunter, an indie de-make of Duck Hunt, which is the first of the light gun games that were being developed to take advantage of this technology, has finally launched as of last week, and is shipping out now, which you can purchase here (physical only for the moment.) It even allows for a simultaneous 2-player mode, which the original Duck Hunt never had!

You will also need to purchase the IntyNES device from 8-bit Widgets to play the game, but it’s a great start to bringing light gun functionality to a retro console that never got the chance before. There’s more games in development now (we got to try several of them at PRGE,) which are planning for release in 2026 and beyond, so the IntyNES is becoming a much better investment for Intellivision owners who want a piece of light gun action.

Moushooter

Moushooter is a fun new light gun game that released on PC earlier this year, and despite all of its main images featuring some quite NSFW anime art and themes, these only appear in the story segments between the shooting stages and in the corners of the screen while shooting. The main gameplay consists of lots of stylish, fast-paced shooting action, as you traverse its many stages, fighting an AI army of robots that’s threatening to take over the world.

The game was designed from the ground up with modern PC light guns in mind, including feedback/recoil for the guns that support it, so this is a great one to check out, as long as you’re ok with some suggestively naughty anime aesthetics scattered around (no nudity, though.)

Blood Storm: Alien Purge

Blood Storm: Alien Purge is an indie light gun shooter released earlier this year, made by a solo developer, and it was also built from the ground up for light gun play, including the recoil functions, and has had a lot of good updates since it first launched. Even when it launched, the game was a lot of fun, but now many of its rough edges have been smoothed out, and it’s worth a shot for any light gun fans.

There’s one odd point of contention with it, in that it uses AI voices for all the lines of dialogue, which are off-putting and very badly translated to English, but if you can get past that, this is a full-featured modern light gun game made by and for fans of the genre. There’s a free demo on the Steam page if you want to try it out for yourself.

The House of the Dead 2 Remake

Back in August, this full remake of The House of the Dead 2 launched on PC and Nintendo Switch, with the other console versions following just a few weeks later, and while it was in a pretty rough state when it launched, there have been a lot of improvements since then, and it’s a better experience, albeit a very different one from the original game.

Though it was promised by the devs back in October, native PC light gun support still hasn’t been implemented for the PC version (though there is a fan mod for it,) and the use of various motion control aiming on the consoles is a mixed bag, with the PS4 version using the PS Aim controllers being the winner of the bunch. There’s a lot of ways to play, and none of them end up as good as the first HOTD remake, but it’s nice to see Sega still showing a little love for the series in 2025.

Kabuki Fire

Kabuki Fire is an odd little indie light gun game that launched over the summer, with 2D shooting gallery type gameplay, a strange art style (maybe uses some AI, but it isn’t disclosed) and a very arcade-oriented focus on high scoring and survival in its aesthetic and modes. It’s not the greatest or most unique light gun experience out there, but for a few dollars, it might float your boat for a shooting gallery type game.

Operation Night Strikers

Operation Night Strikers is a compilation of some of Taito’s legendary games from their golden age of light gun shooters, featuring Space Gun, Operation Wolf, and Operation Thunderbolt, which seems like a recipie for a great collection, but it has its fair share of issues overall. As noted in our full review back in August, the PC version has no light gun support and actively fails to work with any light gun solution other than generic gyro/AR guns, and the Switch version also only features gyro aiming with the JoyCons, even though it’s still a better experience than the PC version overall.

There’s been no effort to fix or update the PC version since launch, unfortunately, leaving this hard to recommend unless you really want to play these easily-emulated games with a mouse or gyro aiming.

G’AIM’E Time Crisis Light Gun

Just a few weeks ago, the new plug & play light gun system from G’AIM’E was released, and we published a full review here after spending a few weeks with it, yielding some pretty impressive results for a plug & play light gun solution. The package includes the original Time Crisis as well as Point Blank and both Steel Gunner games, and can have some pretty impressive accuracy with the right physical setup and calibration.

While it may not be for everyone, it’s great to see Namco allowing a modern re-release of a Time Crisis game, and there’s hope that they may be able to offer more games for the G’AIM’E system as time goes on, so it’s worth mentioning here as a positive new development in the genre in 2025.

GunCon 3 PC Compatibility

This is more a piece of software than anything, but it could be a pretty important one for light gun fans who still have a GunCon 3 sitting around and want to get into playing light gun games on their PC. The software to enable that compatibility was released back in early November and is a pretty big win for light gun fans everywhere, definitely worth mentioning as a development in 2025.

We published a longer article and short tutorial for setting it up recently, which you can find here.

Overall, this was one of the most fruitful years in a long time for new light gun developments both at the arcades and at home, and it’s a little bit hard to say why that is, but we can only hope next year will be as eventful as this one was. Stay tuned for more news and developments as we enter the new year, and hopefully you got to experience some of these things for yourself in 2025.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and we’ll see you next year!

2025 Light Gun Year In Review