Light Guns

Through this page you will learn how to enable Light Gun input for games, and how to play them.

Enabling Light Gun Input for a System in Game Scanner

Simply click the little button to bring the Core Options window and enable the "Lightgun" option. For most cores, that's it, you're done.

You should move your light gun games into a separate folder for that system, e.g. "Games\PS1 (Lightguns)", as enabling that option will affect all games under the folder to receive input as light gun games, and they won't work with normal controls if they're common games. Enabling light gun input for common controller games will disable their input.

Device Code

You'll notice there's a "Device code" field under your "Lightgun" option, showing a number. That number defines the ID for which virtual controller the core will see, such as a gamepad, a mouse, or light guns. Each core can have their own different ID numbers to define which is which.

Game Scanner has an internal database with those default values for each core. When you enable "Lightgun" input, it will automatically select the default light gun device code for you. All the games under that folder will automatically use that input device in Retroarch, which means you don't need to mess with Retroarch's input settings to save core overrides/remaps manually.

Some cores have multiple different light guns models. E.g. some PS1 games, like Time Crisis, will work only with the "Guncon" model, while others, like Area 51, will work only with the "Justifier" model, and each gun has its own device code. You can choose it from the "Device code" drop down in Game Scanner, or manually type a new unknown ID in the field if needed.

TL;DR: If you see your light guns but can't shoot, try another device code from the dropdown.

Light Gun Supported Cores

Not all cores have light gun support. This is a list for which cores you need to choose for the systems you want to play with light guns.

Any cores not listed here will most likely not have light guns support.

System	Core
3DO	4DO
Arcade*	MAME (no year, just "MAME") FB Alpha 2012 (Any flavor) FinalBurn Neo
NES	FCEUmm
PlayStation	Beetle PSX Beetle PSX HW
Sega Master System	Genesis Plus GX
Sega Genesis	Genesis Plus GX
Sega CD	Genesis Plus GX
Sega Saturn	Beetle Saturn
Sega Dreamcast	Flycast
SNES	Snes9x (not 2010, no year, just "Snes9x") bsnes (Any flavor)

Arcade / MAME Games*

More often than not, 3D games can be glitchy in the MAME core. Usually your best course of action is to use a home console port of your arcade game instead, for better compatibility.

E.g. try playing House of the Dead 2 on Dreamcast (Flycast) instead of arcade (MAME).

How to Play

Starting

When you focus input into a game with light gun input enabled, your hands will turn into light guns. Just press the trigger to shoot! When detaching from the game, you'll see your hands again.

Handless

If you're playing with keyboard / mouse or controllers, your "nose" will be your gun and you'll see a crosshair when gazing into a screen running a light gun enabled game. You'll automatically switch between "nose" and hand modes by pressing any respective controller button, even while already attached to a game.

Juggling Multiple Screens

If you have multiple TVs running light gun games, you can seamlessly shoot and switch between all of them, if you have focus input to any light gun game. You can shoot a single screen with both hands, or any screen with any hand. Non light gun screens will be ignored when shooting their TVs.

Reload

There are games where you "reload" by shooting off screen, and that's exactly how do it in EmuVR as well: shoot off screen.

Just be careful to not shoot another screen which is also running another light gun game while trying to reload, or else you'll switch to it instead of registering an off-screen shot to your currently controlled game.

With your keyboard / mouse / controller "nose" gun, you can reload in the same way too, but there's also a shortcut button for easier off-screen shooting (also easier on your neck).

Extra Buttons

Some games need auxiliary buttons on your light gun, such as pressing Select to add a coin, or Start to begin the game, D-Pad to use menus in some Dreamcast games, or a button to take cover and reload in Time Crisis. Each hand holds all auxiliary buttons for that light gun, which means you can use them independently on each screen. The buttons will affect the latest screen you shot, for each hand. Check the button layout below.

Gunslinger / Spin Gun

If you want to show off or just feel cool, press the Grip button with a flick of the wrist to spin your guns! If you just press it with no flick, the gun will just fall hanging from your finger with physics, and then you can spin it from there. You can even shoot while spinning, can you hit your targets like that?

You can configure or disable this in the Settings Menu.

Light Gun Settings

There are a lot of settings to tweak your gunplay.

If you don't want to use the grip buttons to spin your gun, you can repurpose them to trigger a reload or to press Aux buttons instead.

You can make it so that by just pointing your gun Up or Down it will reload or press an aux button for you, which you can use for example to simulate stepping on the Time Crisis pedal to take cover.

There are also settings to toggle haptic feedback (controller vibration) when you shoot, to control gun recoil, and to show only one gun at a time instead of dual wielding.

Controls

If you're using Index Controllers or WMR Controllers, the Touch buttons below will be translated like this: Mapped Controls

Control	Touch	Vive	Gamepad	Keyboard / Mouse
Shoot	Trigger	Trigger	A / RT	Left Click / Space
Aux A	A / X	Trackpad [Down]	X	Z
Aux B	B / Y	Trackpad [Up]	B	X
Aux C	Analog [Up]	Menu Button	Y	A
Start	Analog [Right]	Trackpad [Right]	Start	Right Shift
Select	Analog [Left]	Trackpad [Left]	Select	Enter
D-Pad (Dreamcast)	Grip + Analog	Grip + Trackpad	D-Pad	Arrows
Reload	Shoot off screen	Shoot off screen	LT or Shoot off screen	Left Shift or Right Click or Shoot off screen
Spin	Grip Button (Configurable)	Grip Button (Configurable)
Detach	Press both Analog Sticks	Press both Menu Buttons (only in light gun mode, or else press both Grips)	Press both Analog Sticks	Ctrl + Space