The ems lcd top gun is truly a beauty to look at, but I'm not too good at nit picky details, so a full review might not be too elaborate.
A few facts about the trinket:
The bad;
1.) it works best on flat screens and (I'm praying) projectors. The problem with the gun is when you have a tv that doesn't have a flat screen, as the image that your trying to shoot at is slightly curved around the roundness of the screen near the 4 corners, but the gun is calibrated as if you are shooting a completely flat surface. This problem was the preliminary reason for me separating my xbox & ps2 from my sega consoles (that, and sega's epicness needs to be in its own room...).
While it will still work decently with curved screens (non flat), you end up having to estimate your shots when enemies come in around the corners of the screen (not really a problem in say, time crisis, but defiantly a hardship in vampire nights).
2.) The analog stick on the back is not an analog stick, its just a 4-point d-pad with what appears to be an analog stick on top. Not really a bad thing, but it makes the movement in games like resident evil dead aim not nearly as smooth as it could have been.
3.) You can't turn off the automatic recoiling mechanism on my version of the gun (not sure if there are more than one version). Its a little loud and can easily drown out some of the sound from the games. Also since I live with people, it limits the time of day that I can play with the gun, as between the noise it makes and the fact that I tend to crank up the sound to balance out the guns' noise...
4.) It doesn't always work on crt tv's even if your willing to work around the rounded screens. My friend has a huge old crt tv, not HD, and the gun just wouldn't calibrate on it. Maybe the lines were coming out in a different orientation? That in theory shouldn't matter since it works off of lcd receivers...but still it just wouldn't work on his tv.
5.) With glass screened tv's, the laser tends to reflect in your face/eyes if your not sitting above/below the level of the middle of the tv... Not harmful, but can be annoying if your normal seat when gaming is directly in front of the middle of the tv.
6.) Maybe not really a bad thing, depends on your situation, but there are no orange safety caps on this gun. It literally looks exactly like a beretta. I got mine from play-asia quite some time ago, and it was shipped to me without a problem, but some people might have trouble if that safety tip thing is an issue.
The Good;
1.) This thing is beautiful! Its cast and mold looks exactly like a barette (think jill valentines gun from resident evil 3). The detail in the mold is incredible, and the gun just feels amazing in your hands (a perfect weight, it feels solid, but has mass to it, yet not too heavy so it doesn't wear you down).
2.) While the recoil mechanism is loud, its also quite impressive. The mechanism works in a way that emulates exactly how a real barette would shoot, and the gun is built so well that not even the false analog stick gets anywhere near the sliding part.
3.) Laser light = pin point accuracy. Its as close to using a wii mote as you will ever get with older light gun games. The laser is also adjustable on an X Y axes, so you can make the most perfect line-of-sight when your calibrating the gun to give amazing accuracy!
This can take the challenge out of some light gun games on larger flat screens (even more so when you use the guns auto fire/reload settings)! Don't like the idea of having the laser, or want that good old fashion challenge of arcade light gun games? The laser can be turned off
4.) The LCD bars (the gun has a pair of them, both required), can be put in various positions (either both horizontal, one horizontal and one vertical, ect), so you can sort of find a best-fit for your entertainment system.
5.) The gun has outputs for both xbox & ps2, no adapters required (you can play house of the dead 3 & vampire night with the same gun!). The gun does require the usb slot on a ps2 although.
6.) The gun has a damn cheap price tag! I think I spent more shipping it to me than the gun cost when I got mine. Light gun games are also damn cheap! I see time crisis games in gamestop for $3 complete. Some are hard to find, but still very cheap!
I have a massive collection of sega hardware, including alot of light guns. I know a few of them are not very common, and every time I look for light gun info and run across articles detailing them, there's alot of false information (for example, i have a wired src biogun in my collection, which usually gets bashed for having sub-par accuracy and no memory card slot, when in fact there are two versions of this gun, the later having a shorter cord, extra B & start buttons on the other side of the gun, has a phone line input at the base of the gun (where the normal one looks like it has an empty clip space, no idea why this is there...maybe retro sega genesis pink/blue justifier 2x light gun setup?), with a built in vmu slot on the controller port connection, and amazing accuracy....yet no one ever talks about there being two?).
