Light gun troubles?

I picked up a Interact StarFire Lightblaster & HOTD2. But I'm having some troubles with the light gun.

In a horizontal area around the middle/lower part of the screen and mid-upper part of the screen, the target jumps diagonally up-left to down-right. It doesn't allow targetting well right in these two horizontal areas. It moves around with these diagonal jumps.

I was wondering if this is just a problem with my TV, or possible a problem with the gun? Anyone else experience this?

When I try to do a manual calibration, I am unable to shoot the lower-right calibration target. I have to shoot about 4 inches diagonal up into the screen in order to get it to register the hit. The diagonal jumpiness is still present.

This seems familiar to my Genesis Justifier problem. With the pink guns (but not the blue ones), I'm unable to target about a 3-inch border around my TV's edges. Maybe my TV is just doing something wrong for the light guns.

Thanks,

JMT.
 
is your television a CRT or LCD? if its is a CRT what is the refresh rate? 50Hz, 60Hz or 100Hz and higher.

Your problem may be caused by a refresh problem. If it is not this then maybe it is to do with the DC light gun compatability
 
I think they are. Almost everyone I sold came back as defective. To bad Sega never released their gun in the US. Its silly as they had already manufactured some.
 
Hey! I have an Interact Light Gun! Oh yeah, it sucks ass and is broken. Along with every interact product i buy.
 
I think it's the TV. My MadCatz gun does a similar thing on my screen, but I tried them on another TV and they worked better. It's annoying, but not game-breaking since there's rarely anything in those small areas anyway (my guns just jump around in the corners, not the top and bottom).

Here's a question for you: is your TV flat or curved? I don't know if that would make a difference or not, but I find it suspect since mine is curved, but curves in more sharply at the corners. One of the corners is slightly darker as well, which I'm sure makes a difference.

If you have a nice TV you can adjust the color in different parts of the screen, but most don't have this option. However, if you turn the brightness up, it definitely makes a difference, so give that a shot.
 
If you search for "Dreamcast starfire" on google, you'll get tons of reviews, and every one of them is absolutely glowing with praise (and claims about how wonderfully accurate it is). I seem to be getting a completely different review picture from you guys. Are all the video game magazine reviewers are bought-out?

The TV is fairly old, at least +/-15 years old. It's a fairly large/heavy 27-something inch mitsubishi. It's a CRT. I assume it's at 60hz, since there's no setting to change it, and it is for NTSC. It curves outwords on all 4 sides, which I also thought might explain the pink-justifier problem (I had opened up to compare the blue guns to the pink guns, and the aperature on the light sensor in bigger in the blue guns). The only settings are color, contrast, brightness, sharpness, and tint. I tried every combination, and none of the settings seemed to affect the pink-gun problem. I also tried several combinations with the starfire, but there was no affect.

My parents have a somewhat newer (actually probably 9 years old) sony trinitron TV. It only curves on the left and right sides. Vertically it's flat. If I get a chance I'll bring it over and try it out on theirs.

There were a couple other dreamcast guns I saw. Does anyone have any experience with them? One of them looks kind alike a Star Trek phaser, and the other looks kinda like a 9mm. both are smaller than the Starfire.

Thanks,

JMT.
 
Well, the MadCatz is generally considered to be best out of the guns that were released in the US. That is probably the 'phaser'-looking one. It has a row of LEDs on either side, and lights up when you shoot. It works well, however, the autofire/reload will only work on HOTD2 on most of the guns (there were two models released), not Confidential Mission (I believe it's the same with the Interact).

There are also several guns that can be bought out of HK shops, perhaps the 9mm looking one is one of those. I don't have any experience with them, but I'm sure the quality varies.

Just make sure you don't buy an official Japanese gun, as you won't be able to use it with your US copy of HOTD2.

Also, one thing you can do to alleviate your problem is buy a copy of Confidential Mission. It has an option to change the screen size, so you can shrink the top and bottom areas and play the game letterboxed if you wish. That way you won't have to shoot at those problem areas.
 
Are you sure there's just those two? The majority of the dreamcast guns I see on e-bay are this kind:

Official gun

And they always claim that it's the "official dreamcast gun". This is also the one I see most often at used B&M game stores in the states.

The starfire one is pretty clear which one it is.

This is the one I was calling the phasor, which I believe you're right is the madcatz one:

Phasor

There seems to be several other variations:

Stinger

Vibro-gun

Wireless

Thanks,

JMT.
 
Yes, the MadCatz is the 'official' gun.. the ones I have are like the second link you posted. Sega never put out a gun here because of columbine, so those are considered official.

The first link is the official gun I believe, but it wasn't ever released in NA. Notice the auction says 'tested with Virtua Cop 2'... yes, it will work with that game, but it won't work with NA HOTD2 or CM. See this page:

http://www.planetdreamcast.com/hardware/controllers/

(you have to scroll down to the guns)

I'm not sure why you're seeing a lot of those in stores, they certainly aren't very common at all.

As for the Stingers, they're made by Pelican and are supposed to be quite good. WRT the others, I don't know, but they do look kind of cheap.
 
I've got an Interact Star Fire gun and my only complaint was that the B buttons tend to come out with use but they can easily be pushed back in. Probably should get an offical Sega european model for the hell of it though.
 
The official Sega gun was only released in Japan and Europe. It ONLY works with Japanes and European games (combinations of gun and game don't matter). The ONLY North American game that either the Japanese or European guns work with is Virtua Cop 2 on the Smash Pack. All other games refuse to use it. Trust me on this I own all the light gun games released in North America and my European gun only works with VC2. To tell which gun you have (Japanese or European) you just look at the color of the swirl on it. Orange for Japan and blue for Europe.
 
Same problem! The lower right quadrant of the screen doesn't register the light gun. Very frustrating! It doesn't seem to make sense.
 
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