Hands-on Preview: Intec Gaming Time Breaker Light Gun

At the Portland Retro Gaming Expo a few weeks ago, we had a chance to try out the newly-announced Time Breaker light gun from Intec Gaming, who announced the gun a few months ago as being compatible with the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 hardware and working on modern HDTV displays. They showed off some videos and marketing of the guns in action as well as bringing them to some gaming expos over the last few months, and I’ve been highly curious to try them out for myself to see if these might be a great modern solution for those wanting to get into light gun gaming nowadays.

As time progressed, they also announced they’d be working on making versions of the gun that also worked on other consoles besides the PlayStation 1 and 2, and also making a version for PC as well. When we got a chance to try them out in Portland, they had both the PlayStation and PC versions to try, and there’s a lot of thoughts on the system so far.

First impressions with the gun were on the visual and ergonomic side of things, where the gun looks pretty sleek, even if basic (close to a GunCon, but with a few differences,) and has quite a few buttons and lights, with a pretty balanced weight overall. The fact that it’s as light as it is, despite having a rechargeable battery inside is fairly impressive, and it felt mostly comfortable to hold and aim, with one small exception, that being the trigger.

The trigger has a lot of resistance and a pretty long trigger pull to get the switch to register a shot, and the space for your finger to fit inside the trigger guard is fairly small, so if you have bigger fingers, it makes for a bit of an uncomfortable trigger pull in its current state. The developers stated this is something they’re working on updating before the final release, but it was one of the only things that felt off about the gun for me, ergonomically.

The bottom C button is here, just like the GunCon 2

The buttons were nicely placed overall, almost like a hybrid of a GunCon 1 and 2, and though the A and B buttons were a little off as far as sensitivity on the PlayStation version, I was told the prototype model they had to show at PRGE had a faulty A button that they hadn’t been able to fix in time for the show. Thankfully, for most games, the A and B buttons do the same thing, anyway. There’s also a nice rumble recoil feature, which can also be set to auto-fire rumble on the PC version for games like Operation Wolf, and it was a very solid rumble that definitely made a difference in the feel of the shooting.

The game I was able to try on the PlayStation gun was Time Crisis 3, playing on a PlayStation 2 console, and I finally got to feel how it works for myself. The initial feeling was that the accuracy and speed of the guns was fairly off a lot of the time, and this may be more related to the fact that the PlayStation version functions with a single receiver/sensor at the top of the screen, and requires a lot of distance from the screen, in addition to the natural latency of a wireless gun.

The sensor for the PlayStation version of the gun

This made it feel closer to using a Wiimote for aiming, but since it’s running on on actual PlayStation console, there’s no ability to add a crosshair to the screen, so it was hard to ever know exactly where your shots would be going and they rarely ever lined up with where I thought I was aiming. Since the gun is wireless and its also running on a modern HD monitor (which may or may not have been a relatively high-latency display as well,) shots usually felt delayed and a bit off from where I was aiming. When I asked the developers, they said to get higher tracking accuracy, the guns technically should be calibrated for your specific setup and height/stance, but since there were many people trying it at the event, there wasn’t time to calibrate for each person. This would have to be something we’ll need to test once the final unit is out.

The game was also stretched to fit on a widescreen monitor, which also probably didn’t help the accuracy either, since all the light gun games for PS1 and PS2 are 4:3 aspect ratio games, and they did mention that the PS1/PS2 HDMI converter that’s an optional part of this package does include a 4:3 mode, but they had left it on 16:9 for the event. There is a somewhat unique feature of these guns where there’s two lights on the back of the handle that tell you whether or not the tracking is active or if you’re outside of the tracking area where you’re aiming. Setting this up more accurately could go a long way towards accuracy in some regards, but since there’s only one sensor on the PlayStation version, the only way to change your tracking area in the middle of a game is to move closer or further from the screen or recalibrate.

The small lights on the back show whether you’re inside or outside of aiming range.

Afterward, I moved on to the PC version, which used a 2-point IR tracking system and generally felt a little more accurate than the PlayStation version, but still had some unfortunate latency issues. The good part was that the PC version did have a crosshair, which at least helped for accuracy, but the fact that the crosshair moved slowly and inaccurately that it was still hard to play, and the screen was also stretched to widescreen aspect ratio, which none of the available games were designed for.

I was able to play a number of games including Hogan’s Alley, Duck Hunt, Mechanized Attack, Operation Wolf, and Beast Busters, and while it did feel a bit more accurate than the console version, it was still pretty hard to play, but there’s a lot of other factors that may have contributed to this as well, like the TV itself and the device it was running the games on, but I wasn’t able to change those factors for further testing at the show. The developers said in ideal conditions, the guns run at a relatively low 11ms latency, but it felt like a lot more at the show, so we’ll need to do further testing on a more optimal setup to truly test this out.

The PC version still has a while longer to go in development (they’re hoping for a release in the first half of 2026,) so I’m hoping more of these issues can be ironed out, but with the PlayStation version launching soon, there might be a tight window to get more of its issues fixed before it launches late next month. I’m also hoping that using both guns in better hardware conditions may improve their performance quite a bit, but the nature of the guns being wireless will add some feeling of latency no matter what.

I also learned a bit more about the price points for the system, and where they stand right now, they’re definitely aiming for a little too high of a price point, with the PlayStation version being either $120 or150 USD, depending if you get the HDMI converter with it, and the PC version being closer to $90-100, and neither of the guns feel worth this price in state that I got to experience them at the expo, especially compared to some of the other solutions out there. I’d be curious to test the PlayStation version on a CRT monitor as well, but I’m hoping they can get the functionality up on these across the board before they hit the market over the next several months.

The PlayStation version of the guns occupy a unique place in the market, since there aren’t really any other solutions for a wireless light guns that work on the consoles and is compatible with HDTVs, so if you’re someone who really craves that functionality, they are offering a solution for you, just at a high cost.

And while I’d love for the PC version to be a good modern solution for people looking to get into light gun gaming, there’s a few issues that stop them from reaching that point in their current state, especially when there’s similarly priced (or cheaper) options out there on PC like the Sinden Light Gun for wired options, and wireless options like the the Dolphin Sensor Bar and X-Gunner.

I’m planning to stay in contact with the developers about any additional changes they end up making as development continues, and I’m hoping they’ve got some good feedback during the recent show appearances to help improve the system before launch. Stay tuned for more info and hopefully a full review when the gun is available in the next few months.