Hello again. We've reached Quarter two of 2022 and, after a chaotic start to the year, we're now in a bit of a release dry patch for the coming months. Expect a fair bit of coverage of older stuff in the coming issues. Like, genuinely, two of the games I'm most excited about in the next quarter are retro reissue collections. Possibly three if one of them gets a release date. Anyway, old shit is what you're here for, right?

Lightgun Fantastic.

You didn't have to be Nostradamus to have a good idea that the House of the Dead Remake was going to be a bit of a mess. First of all, its on the Switch. Secondly, it was developed by the team behind the underwhelming Panzer Dragoon Remake. Finally, and this is the most important part for anyone who is a real fan of light gun games - how on Earth is House of the Dead going to work without a proper, functioning light gun?

An actual light gun is obviously a bust on the Switch, there's no solution like the Sinden gun available so you're left with either JoyCon gyro controls simulating the gun or - shudder - control pad moving a crosshair around the screen. Both fundamentally problematic when it comes to being able to play House of the Dead properly. The crosshair controls issues are fairly obvious - you have to move the bloody thing between targets, meaning you can't just instantly shoot at two things at either side of the screen without some kind of delay. Gyro controls have a less obvious issue. With a real light gun, there's a white flash when you pull the trigger which allows the game and gun to figure out where you just shot, allowing for you to hit anywhere on the screen instantaneously. With a gyro input, you're basically dragging a cursor around and 'painting' the screen with bullets. Done correctly, or with a game that is designed around this like the brilliant Ghost Squad, it can be an acceptable means of playing a light gun game without the necessary CRT setup but in House of the Dead, the limitation of this is clear within ten seconds of starting the game.

There's an infamously difficult shot to make right at the start of House of the Dead. After shooting literally the first two zombies, you're confronted with two scientists about to be killed and in order to successfully save them you need to make two astoundingly accurate shots in quick succession. It's one of the hardest shots to make in the entire game and basically impossible without a proper light gun. This only gets worse as the game goes on, with some bosses - especially the final boss - firing off projectiles that are designed around having the ability to place your shots anywhere on the screen. The game hasn't been adapted or balanced around not having a real light gun - which I guess is a good thing in regards to the accuracy of the remake! - but all the footage I've seen of the game makes it look like some parts are going to be an exercise in frustration if you're going for a perfect clear.

I miss light gun games, man. The aforementioned Ghost Squad and the underrated House of the Dead: Overkill and Dead Space: Extraction were the last real belters I played but all those classics - Virtua Cop, Time Crisis, Point Blank and, of course, the House of the Dead games are sort of lost to the annals of time due to the fact that they can't be played without the original hardware and a big old CRT screen. Emulation and a mouse cursor replacing the gun input makes them playable but not quite right. However, I have recently found a way to enjoy the home ports of these games in a fairly authentic way and it has been a blast - pun intended - revisiting these over the past week or so.

Enter the incredible EmuVR.

Now, EmuVR is something that I will almost certainly be talking about again in some more detail in the future but, to give you the basics, its essentially a big customisable virtual bedroom, designed for VR headsets, where you can play with 3D models of classic consoles and play your ROMs and ISOs on emulated CRT screens. For now, however, we're going to be focusing on the fact that in the latest update, support for almost all console light guns has been implemented. NES Zapper games, PS1's Namco GunCon games, the originally named 'Dreamcast Gun' games. Hell, even the SNES Super Scope games work here.

I mean, just have a look at this. This should give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

I should stress, I have absolutely NO idea how this works! It might as well be fucking magic, as far as I'm concerned. All I know is I drop the appropriate games into an appropriate folder and when fire them up in EmuVR they work exactly how I remember them, even down to calibrating them based on the size of the screen and my distance to it. It's incredible and has got me thinking that perhaps this is the best way to bring back these legendary games.

I've seen many people talking about VR versions of Time Crisis and the like and assuming that the best way to present this is by putting you right IN the action, like most other VR shooting games. However, after a few weeks messing around with EmuVR I've convinced myself that I'd love to see something far simpler. Just a virtual arcade and a perfectly rendered cabinet for the relevant game. That way, you're not just preserving the game and allowing people to play it again but also, in some way, preserving the way these games were played too.

Although there is some MAME support, this really works best on console ports of the games right now. With stuff like Point Blank and House of the Dead 2, this is fine because those home ports are exceptionally good. Things like the PS1 Time Crisis and the Saturn House of the Dead (ESPECIALLY the Saturn House of the Dead, in fact) are a bit rough around the edges and aren't a patch on the arcade original. Based on how good they work, regardless of game quality, it is surely only a matter of time before everything can be played in this way, right?

Despite being stuck with the Saturn port, this still feels like a much, much better way to experience House of the Dead and a nice reminder of the cool stuff that made that game so beloved. A really hardcore shooter, geared around aggressive enemies, requiring split second target acquisition and a crack shot but with a replay value outside of score chasing that these games often lack. All of the secret routes to be found offer a fair bit of variety and some rad setpieces, allowing you to slowly piece together your favoured path through the game, based on factors like how difficult you find certain sections, speed of reaching the boss, potential for rescuing scientists and, of course, simply which areas you find the most satisfying to blast your way through.

Although the Sinden Light gun is much cheaper than a VR headset, it's definitely more of an enthusiast product, while a headset (I'm using the Quest 2, linked to my PC wirelessly via Virtual Desktop) does have a lot more uses than simply playing Time Crisis in something resembling my bedroom aged 17. It's genuinely the best time I've had in VR to date, and I've finished Resident Evil 4 VR.

Recommended: Chrono Trigger

Inspired somewhat by the recent reissue of Chrono Cross (a game, for what it is worth, I only played upon its original import release and truly wasn't that arsed about), I've started playing the original Chrono Trigger again. This is only my second time playing the game, despite it being one of my favourite JRPGs ever. Although the combat is fairly by the numbers, with a couple of little wrinkles, it is solid enough to underpin the still quite unique setting and the excellent characters - in regards to their design and storylines/motives - still hold up remarkably well.

You don't really need me to tell you that Chrono Trigger is still a top tier JRPG but maybe I can explain why I still find it so bloody special after all these years? There's something about Chrono Trigger that still feels like it is brand new, like it is some exciting new thing, not nearly thirty years old. I mean, it probably helps that it still hasn't been reissued that often and most physical re-releases sell for a hefty amount, but still!

The first time I saw Chrono Trigger was on the front cover of the legendary Super Play magazine, at the front of Tesco. Whenever my parents did the weekly big shop they'd dump me by the magazine section and I'd just absorb everything there, regardless of format. Super Play was a favourite, though. Super Play was one that would get bought and brought home. Nintendo Magazine System and CVG would show up in the local newsagent - but not Super Play. That was only in the supermarket. It felt bigger and better somehow and this was a vibe that was only cemented further by the brilliant Wil Overton artwork on the covers and being full of these exotic games that you didn't see anywhere else. I didn't realise at the time but this was covering a lot of the burgeoning SNES import scene. While everywhere else was covering Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct, this magazine was talking up these titles like the second coming.

The screenshots confirmed this. What an incredible looking game. I couldn't wait to play it. But, as was the way with SNES JRPGs, it never came out here in the UK.

Fast forward a couple of years. I'm in my teens, I'd played and finished Final Fantasy 7 and me and a mate, well, we wanted more. MORE JRPGs. MORE Squaresoft. The second a PC and the internet entered our lives we quickly discovered the world of emulation. Suddenly, all these rare import SNES titles were easy to access and, crucially, free. A whole world of incredible games had opened up for us and Chrono Trigger was right at the top of the list. Finally, I'd get to play it. It more than lived up to the hype.

Those early days of discovering emulation hold a special place in my heart. Sure, we used it to replay stuff like Super Mario World and Street Fighter 2 but suddenly having access to these games that I'd only seen on the pages of Super Play - Final Fantasy 6, Secret of Mana, Mario RPG and Breath of Fire to name a few - it felt like magic. There was never any weird feeling that we were committing piracy or anything like that because there was no way to play these games. They basically ONLY existed through emulation. Every time we went online it was exciting - what would we find this time?

Chrono Trigger is the poster child for two periods I remember fondly. Finding out about import games and suddenly being aware of stuff that wasn't just the big Nintendo flagship titles and then my introduction to emulation and the ability to start playing games that were completely inaccessible otherwise. It came at that age where I'd started to figure out what my tastes were in games and music, those first forays online and discovering not only these classic games but also that - shock - other people liked them, people were into videogame soundtracks, people discussed them and recommended other titles.

I'm glad that, after decades of taking that stuff for granted, Chrono Trigger retains some of the magic it had back then.

OTHER STUFF WORTH LOOKING AT THIS WEEK IN ONE SENTENCE.

Dungeon Encounters - A stripped back JRPG/Puzzle game mash up that is starting to get its hooks in me and might warrant its own full write up in one of these newsletters soon.

Links 2004 - A golf game so good it immediately killed off the Links game franchise as they had achieved perfection.

OutRun 2: Online Arcade Edition - One of the nice side effects of plugging in the 360 to play Links 2004 is remembering you have one of the greatest arcade racing games ever made installed and waiting for you.