Blaze Scorpion

The reviews on this site are the text versions of the videos on my YouTube channel. The text based reviews use (if at all) very little pictures. Please follow the link to the corresponding video in order to see in game graphics.

The Scorpion is a popular light gun of the late nineties. A famous distributer of the Scorpion was Blaze but it was also distributed by a slew of other companies such as Blitz, be art, Panther, Pelican, and Super UFO. Sometimes different names were used for it such as "PSX Shocking Pistol" by Tosa, "Golden Bullet Gun" by Naki, "Time Pistol" by es and Bio Gun "Special Weapon". There are versions which solely support the Sony PlayStation and versions which additionally support the Sega Saturn.

The gun was made to look like a Walther PPK without a license. Some viewers might recognize the design of the gun from episode 62 in which I turned a similar Famiclone gun into my Magnavox Odyssey Pistoltronix. On the left side are a reload and a start button. In-between is a latching switch, which allows the player to choose either normal or Guncon mode. The gun's safety lever acts as selector switch for the fire mode. Normal, Auto Reload and Auto Reload plus Auto Fire are the choices. Auto Reload reloads the gun in a fife shots interval. The hammer acts as action button. A portion of the magazine is removable and servers as battery tray to power the optional rumble feature. The feature can be engaged using the switch at the heel of the magazine.

The gun was offered in a slew of different color and texture options. Most of the guns came with a lovely fake wood plastic grip plate. The sight picture is clear and very usable. In my opinion the gun is rather small and not perfectly suited for huge hands. The trigger feels nice and is clicky. When pressing the trigger two switches are actuated almost simultaneously. When releasing the trigger however the two switches relax at a different moment. One switch is for the trigger signal and one is to engage the rumble. This strange two switch solution can be found in a variety of light guns, which I find puzzling as more elegant solutions aren't much more difficult to build. The rumble isn't very strong and kicks in a little bit too late. It behaves correctly during events of fast consecutive shots and full auto fire.

The gun has bad a accuracy and bad a precision. A small area at the bottom of the screen is unusable. The normal non Guncon mode wasn't working with my particular gun. The mapping of the A button to the hammer wasn't well suited for cover based light gun games such as Time Crisis. I would explain the gun's commercial success with its low price and that it was simply "good enough" for many people. For some customers the lackluster precision and accuracy was possibly compensated with the addition of the fire modes. Personally I am glad to own the gun for its significance in history and for its nice looks, but I can't see myself using this gun for hunting high scores. To people who are looking for a pocket pistol light gun, I would recommend the improved Panther one shot version instead or the Logic3 P7K which has better accuracy and precision than the Scorpion.

The box I own shows a blurry picture of the gun. Overall I think it does a good job explaining the features and benefits of this gun.