Light guns for your arcade machine

Few things bring back the arcades quite like a machine with two guns hanging from its sides: Time Crisis, The House of the Dead, Virtua Cop… Today you can have that at home, on your own arcade machine, but not with just any gun or any system.

In this guide we explain why the guns of the past don’t work on a flat screen, what types of light gun are available now, which one fits a bartop best and which games you can play with them. The compatibility information comes from the light gun guide by Batocera, the system that makes them easiest to use, and from the manufacturers themselves.

Why the gun from your childhood doesn’t work on a flat screen

Classic guns, such as the NES Zapper or the PlayStation GunCon, don’t “see” the screen. They take advantage of the way a CRT television drew the picture: line by line, from top to bottom, always at the same pace. The gun detects the instant the beam passes in front of its sensor and, from that timing, the console works out where you are aiming.

An LCD or OLED screen doesn’t work like that: it receives the whole frame, processes it and displays it all at once. That timing disappears, and the gun no longer knows where it is. That is why Batocera warns that the original GunCon 2 only works on CRT televisions and cannot be used on a modern digital display.

Today’s guns solve the problem in a different way: they have a camera or an infrared sensor and connect via USB. The computer recognises them as a pointer, and the emulator translates that pointer into the original game’s gun.

Which system you need in your machine

• Pandora board: only a very limited number of models. The Pandora Box 10th Anniversary and the Pandora GunMax.
• Raspberry Pi: yes, with Batocera. It works for classic MAME arcade games, PlayStation, Saturn or Naomi. If you connect two Sinden guns, the Raspberry needs a good power supply.
• PC: the most complete option. Some systems with lots of gun games only run on PC: Model 2 (The House of the Dead, Virtua Cop), which Batocera runs through Wine, Wii, PlayStation 2 or the Lindbergh arcade games.

If you haven’t decided yet, in Which system should you choose for an arcade machine? we compare Pandora, Raspberry and PC, and in What PC do I need for emulation? you’ll find out which computer each system needs.

Types of light gun

There are two ways for a gun to know where you’re aiming on a flat screen, and each one has its consequences in an arcade machine.

Camera and white border: Sinden Lightgun

The Sinden has a camera inside that looks for a white frame around the picture. Batocera draws that border automatically when you connect it and shrinks the game image to make room for it.

• Pros: nothing needs to be installed on the screen. It connects via USB and calibrates in a few seconds: hold the D-pad to the left for five seconds and shoot at the centre.
• Cons: the border takes space away from the picture, which you notice more on a bartop screen than on a large TV. And you have to turn off any overscan or zoom setting on the monitor so that the border isn’t hidden.
• Approximate price: about 100 dollars without recoil and 160 with recoil, according to the Batocera wiki.

Infrared: GUN4IR, Retro Shooter, AimTrak and others

These guns have an infrared sensor and get their bearings from LEDs placed around the screen: in the corners or on a bar, depending on the model. The game image is shown in full, with no borders.

• GUN4IR: the highest rated for accuracy in Batocera’s table, with five stars. It uses four LEDs around the screen and comes as a kit to build yourself (about 80 dollars) or ready-built (about 200). One detail: custom settings are made from Windows with its own tool and saved on the gun itself; after that, it works on any system.
• Retro Shooter: current models come with four LEDs, one per corner; older ones had two. The RS3 Reaper has slide recoil, which needs a separate 24 V power supply, and the kit includes two pedals. It requires Batocera 42 or later.
• Ultimarc AimTrak: a classic in DIY builds, with its own infrared bar. Batocera gives it two stars for accuracy and warns that you sometimes have to repeat the calibration several times before it takes effect.
• Others: Blamcon, Fusion, OpenFIRE or XGunner also work in Batocera. Guns from the Wii Remote family used with the Mayflash DolphinBar, on the other hand, are considered obsolete by Batocera, which does not recommend them.

Which one should you choose for a bartop?

If you want to plug in and play without touching the machine, the Sinden is the simplest option, at the cost of the white border. If you’d rather see the full picture and don’t mind fitting the LEDs, an infrared gun with four LEDs is more accurate. With two LEDs, accuracy drops and you have to stand further back.

Watch the distance

This is the most commonly overlooked point when fitting guns to an arcade machine. Each gun needs a minimum distance from the screen to keep track of where you’re aiming, and the Batocera wiki gives it as a proportion of the screen size:

• Sinden: 1.5 times.
• GUN4IR: 2 times, or 1.2 with a fisheye lens.
• Retro Shooter with four LEDs: 2 times; with two LEDs, between 2.5 and 3.
• AimTrak: between 2 and 2.5 times.

In front of a bartop you play at control panel distance, very close to the screen. With a 24-inch screen (61 cm diagonal), 1.5 times is about 90 cm. In practice, you’ll need to take a step back to shoot.

How to fit them into your arcade machine

• Where to keep them: the most convenient option is to hang them on the side of the cabinet, as in the arcades. Our light gun holder screws onto the side, at an angle, and fits the Sinden, AimTrak and Retro Shooter.
• The LEDs: with infrared guns, they are stuck around the screen. On a bartop, the natural place is the bezel frame, outside the picture.
• The USB ports: each gun goes into its own port. With two Sinden guns, Batocera recommends not using a USB hub and spreading them across different ports, for example one at the front and one at the back.
• The machine’s buttons: many guns have no coin or start button. Batocera pairs each gun with the same player’s controller, so on your machine you’ll use the panel buttons to insert credits and start the game. If your cabinet has USB interfaces, that’s already taken care of.
• Pedals and recoil: since version 40, Batocera recognises pedals without any configuration, which works wonderfully in Time Crisis. If your gun has recoil with its own power supply, plan for a power socket inside the cabinet.

Which games you can play

Batocera marks compatible games in the list with a gun icon. These are the systems with the most gun games, according to its compatibility table:

• Classic arcade games (MAME and FinalBurn Neo): Operation Wolf, Lethal Enforcers, Terminator 2 or Area 51. They support two guns.
• Sega Model 2 (PC only): The House of the Dead, Virtua Cop and Virtua Cop 2. For now, Batocera only supports one gun on Model 2 and recommends turning off the crosshair, because it doesn’t match where you’re aiming.
• Sega Model 3: The Lost World: Jurassic Park, with two guns.
• Naomi: The House of the Dead 2 and Confidential Mission.
• PlayStation: Time Crisis and Point Blank, with the GunCon emulated in DuckStation.
• Saturn: Virtua Cop and The House of the Dead. You have to calibrate the gun once from each game’s menu.
• PlayStation 2 and Wii (PC only): Time Crisis 2, House of the Dead: Overkill or The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return.

As always, emulators don’t come with games: you have to use copies of games you own the originals of.

New: The House of the Dead, rewritten for PC and for up to four players

This autumn saw the release of The House of the Dead ReWrithe, a fan project that rewrites the first House of the Dead in C++. It isn’t an emulator: it combines the Model 2 arcade game with the 1998 PC version and runs as a native game on Windows. There are also versions for Linux and Mac.

• What it adds: widescreen, online co-op and up to four players on the same computer (the original supports two; the third and fourth are experimental).
• Guns: the menu has settings for infrared, Sinden and CRT guns. The author points out that, for now, they have only tested it by simulating them, not with real guns, so we’ll have to see how well it works.
• What you need: your own copy of the arcade game (revision A) and of the 1998 PC game. The project includes neither of them.

With four guns, a bartop’s control panel gets too cramped. That’s what our 4-player arcade cabinet is for, with room for a 32-inch monitor.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use guns with a Pandora board?

Only with two specific models: the Pandora Box 10th Anniversary, which is no longer made, and the Pandora GunMax, a separate model that comes with its own guns. The Pandora boards in our packs don’t support guns, so to use the ones in this guide you need a Raspberry Pi or a PC inside the machine.

Does it work on a Raspberry Pi?

Yes, with Batocera, for classic arcade games, PlayStation, Saturn or Naomi. Model 2, PlayStation 2 or Wii need a PC. If you connect two Sinden guns to a Raspberry Pi 4, Batocera recommends one in the USB 3 port and the other in the USB 2 port, plus a power supply with plenty of headroom.

Will the gun from my old PlayStation work?

Only with a CRT television, because it relies on the way the picture is scanned. It doesn’t work on a flat screen.

How many guns can I connect?

Usually two, one per player, and almost all gun games are for two players. Some systems in Batocera only support one for now: Model 2, Naomi with the Flycast emulator and the Namco System 246 arcade games.

Sources

Accessed in November 2026:

• Batocera: light gun guide (comparison, distances, compatibility by system) and Model 2.
• Manufacturers: Sinden, GUN4IR, Retro Shooter and Ultimarc.
• The House of the Dead ReWrithe, on GitHub.