Joytech Sharp Shooter Arcade Gun

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Joytech famously was one of the distributors of the “Super Jolt Gun” also called “The Real Arcade Light Gun”. Amongst the other distributers were Pelican and Innovation. These guns weren't very good, but they demand high prices nowadays as they are scavenged for their shell to put in an Ultimarc AimTrak PCB to use the already present force feedback solenoid.

Amongst the light guns Joytech distributed other than the Super Jolt Gun was a series of guns known as the Sharp Shooters. In this episode I am showing the first entry thereof called Sharp Shooter Arcade Gun. It was released for the Sony PlayStation. This gun is nice to hold and has a good sight picture. The gun reminds me a lot of the Colt Double Eagle pistol design, but sports a safety switch which the Colt doesn't have. This safety works as reload button and the slide catch release lever acts as selector between normal and Guncon mode. On the side are the start button and another reload button. The hammer is a switch which selects either normal, burst or full automatic as fire mode.

This gun is often mistaken for a force feedback light gun, as the slide is able to reciprocate backwards. Opening the gun however reveals that no force feedback mechanism is present. There is an empty motor block which suggests that a system was planned at some stage, but then dropped. Another residue of this is the hole in the magazine heel. Force feedback was dropped in a stage that early that no means of interaction for such a mechanism were put into the slide yet. The motor holder serves as platform for the safety lever reload button.

Sadly the side buttons actuate before they make contact and have to be pressed very strongly in order to work. The normal gun mode wasn't working at all for me. Therefore I can just comment on the Guncon mode. The Sharp Shooter has a good accuracy but bad precision. The gun fails to measure positions towards the borders of the screen. Most notable a huge chunk of the bottom part of the screen can't be used. There the gun detects the position as the bottom middle regardless of where the player is aiming at. The built quality is low. Hot glue strings were crossing the contacts of the rubber buttons. The gun uses a real micro switch for the trigger but uses an indirect mechanism which involves a very loud spring. This spring causes a very uneven trigger feeling. Furthermore the necessary distance the trigger has to travel in order to fire a shot, seems unreasonably long.

Personally I was disappointed by this gun and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.