Aww yeah.

Consider the light zapper. No, seriously, think about it. For many children, the most amazing part of the original Nintendo Entertainment System was the NES Zapper, a silver-gray (quickly replaced with hunting orange) handheld pistol that allowed us to hunt ducks in our living room. It made an entire generation of boys and girls want to murder a snickering dog. It even made a gigantic, satisfying CLANG noise when you pulled the trigger. It had springs. Springs meant quality.

We’re spoiled today by our Wii remotes and our Natal technology (or we will be soon). It was a gun that shot light! Or at least that was what we were lead to believe. So there weren’t many game developers that opted to design games for it, or for the Light Phaser for the Sega Master System (my personal gun of choice because they modeled it off an obscure Japanese anime). These were novelties at best–a clever use of cathode-ray technology that to this day I still can’t quite understand (magic, I assume).

PEW PEW PEW

Then, for a few years, nothing happened. Until Nintendo decided to up the ante, bazooka-style.

This device made no sense.

Enter the Super Scope. And this is really the point of this article, if there even is one (a conversation my editor and I will no doubt be having shortly). The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was replaced with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It is a better system, because it has the word “super” prominently attached. In this same manner of thinking, the Super Scope is better than the Zapper, because it has the word “super” in front of it. Also, it is six feet long. And you can kill a man with it. And it eats batteries. And you have to hold it like a five year-old holds a pool cue.

Is this how you use the Super Scope? NO ONE KNOWS

There was nothing super about the Super Scope. Why did Nintendo think the way to go was to develop a light gun so large, cumbersome and gigantic that it required a shoulder mount to wield? This is progress? You could use the old Zappers to rob banks. They were gun-shaped. They made excellent Halloween costume additions. The build quality was such that, even today, you still see them about, like elderly nerd trophies. The only thing you could do with the Super Scope is place it in the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie. Nobody wants a rocket-propelled grenade light zapper. It’s creepy.

As for Sega, their foray was a bit more sensible, but not by much. The Menacer had an admittedly cool name, but had even weaker third party developer support, and included a game called Ready, Aim Tomatoes!, distilling a fantastic Sega franchise (Toe Jam & Earl) down to its most base element–throwing tomatoes–thereby ruining it forever. You could detach the ugly and unnecessary shoulder stock and wield it like a proper pistol, but the gun had the shooting accuracy of a drunken wino.

This device made slightly more sense.

Seriously. Who looked at the Zapper and said, “Hey, I can do that, except I’ll make it six times as heavy, four times as long, make it shoulder-mounted and have it run on twenty-six batteries per day!” Darwin would be very irritated by this person and their design philosophies. Ironic then that the only place the Super Scope remains a viable peripheral is in the world of the Smash Bros., where the gun (if charged) can wallop some people. And amusingly, not even the characters in the game know exactly how to hold it.

Eh, close enough.

Do you have any fond memories of zapping things as a child? Share them. Come on. Please help me justify this article.