Last year at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, we got a chance to check out an early preview of the IntyNES peripheral from 8-Bit Widgets that allowed light gun games to be played on original Intellivision consoles, as well as a preview of some of the games that were in the works to support the hardware.
This year, we had a chance to catch up with 8-Bit Widgets again and get a much deeper preview of the games, including a few new games, as well as a new peripheral that enables the light gun functionality, called the MintyNES.
Atlantida
As for the new games we got to try, the first was Atlantida, which was a blast to play and felt like a light gun version of the old Atari 2600 game, Atlantis. There was a good variety of gameplay between the stages and it was a blast to play.
Skeet Shooter
The next new game was Sheet Shooter, which is essentially a more complex version of Duck Hunt’s Clay Shooting mode with more variety and a rapid-fire “olympic” round with many targets in quick succession. This one was also a lot of fun and added a new dimension to a classic of the genre.
Pillbox
The third new game was Pillbox, which has a number of air, sea, and land targets to blast before they’re able to shoot you, and while the gameplay was simple, it was pretty challenging and fun for a few rounds.
Hotel Gunny
The last new game was called Hotel Gunny, where you’re tasked to stop a bunch of rabid bunnies from destroying your hotel in the middle of the screen, and this one escalated in difficulty pretty quickly, but made me want to keep trying to get a higher score.
The Range and Zapperlords
The other two games we got to play were two that we also checked out last year, The Range and Zapperlords, both being essentially ports or adaptations of Shooting Gallery (SMS) and Warlords (2600, etc.) Both of these were just as fun as when we checked them out last year, though Zapperlords is meant more to be a local multiplayer game to get the most out of it. Both of these are included in the Light Gun Collection Vol. 2.
Here’s a collage video of everything we got to try out this year, where you can see all the games in action:
If you include the one game that already released last year, Duck Hunter, and the one other game that we got to try out last year, which was a light gun adaptation of Sega’s classic Bank Panic, this puts the number of light gun titles playable or soon-to-be playable on the Intellivision up to a whopping eight games in just a short amount of time.
The great amount of software support this movement is receiving is really exciting to see, and it makes the value of the 8-Bit Widgets adapters that much more enticing for anyone who owns an Intellivision and loves light gun games.
The IntyNES and it’s smaller brother, the MintyNES
All 6 of the games we got to play this year have just released on two separate cartridges through Intellivision Collector as Light Gun Collection Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, and Duck Hunter is already available as well. All three of these releases also have digital ROM releases as well, if you happen to have an Intellivision flash cart solution.
Both the IntyNES and the smaller, cheaper MintyNES adapters from 8-Bit Widgets can either be purchased from their Etsy or eBay stores, or you can email them directly for purchasing as well to save a few dollars in fees.
I can’t wait to see more support coming for this surge of light gun games for classic consoles and hopefully the wider classic console enthusiast communities can come together to enjoy the work all these software and hardware developers are pouring into these projects.