(Sega for Wii)
By Mike Delano
Although there are a handful of great light gun games (maybe more, depending on just how rose-tinted your remembrances are for the bygone days of bustling arcades), the genre’s best moment was 1995’s Time Crisis. Its excellent pacing, unique foot pedal-based cover system and satisfying feedback has never been bettered, although there have been plenty of admirable attempts since. Even some on consoles, since the point-and-shoot nature of the Wii Remote is a pretty good fit for perpetual blast-athons. 2009’s gloriously profane The House of the Dead: Overkill was a great attempt to modernize the genre, but this dumping ground for two also-rans from the light gun’s mid-’90’s heyday is strictly old-school. They’re both faithful recreations of arcade games known more for their comically unwieldy plastic cannons than for their one-note gameplay, and sometime during the hour it takes to play through them, the nostalgia of older gamers should be fully sated. But what then? Then it’s time to go back to pining for a real light-gun compilation, one that feels less like a careless grab-bag and more like a carefully collected, fully-featured game like last year’s Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection.
(www.sega.com)