Review – G’AIM’E System

G’AIM’E is a plug-and-play standalone console designed to let gamers enjoy some classic arcade action on their home television sets, no matter the size! Using a camera in the end of the wired plastic gun, players will calibrate the system to their TV set when they play, making it easy to make sure you’re able to have fun shooting at the screen instead of wondering if it’s working properly. Preloaded on the console are Time Crisis, Steel Gunner 1 & 2, and Point Blank. These 4 games cover the gamut of what arcade shooters had to offer in the early ’90s – serious danger and reloading, light gun automatic fire, and more family-friendly minigames that anyone could enjoy. 

Content Guide

Violence

Time Crisis sees you shooting at terrorists, claw and knife toting baddies, and hostage takers, who all fall down when shot with groans but no blood or gore. When your character takes a hit, they’ll get a red bullet-hole-looking mark on the screen, or a red slash from some characters with knives. At one point, a hostage gets shot in the shoulder. 

Steel Gunner has you shooting robots and cyborgs, and on occasion, you can bisect them, leaving a set of legs behind, but there’s no blood or gore even if you accidentally shoot a bystander (the game flashes words over them like NOOO!). Steel Gunner 2 still sees you shooting some robots, but now there are aliens in the mix, many of whom die with a splash of pink blood. Both games feature destructible backgrounds, and players are scolded by the game if they blow up too much of the city. 

Point Blank has dozens of shooting minigames, but none of them are overly violent. A couple of the shooting galleries have you shooting at cardboard cutouts of ninjas or mobsters; another one has you shooting at jumping skeletons in a graveyard. A few of the games have you trying to save a muppet-like character that gets thrown up against the screen in a splat should you fail. 

Review

Hardware

The gun itself is bright blue and orange, with a 12-foot orange cable. It has a nice thocky trigger, and on the left side of the gun, an “A” and “Coin” buttons, as well as a Recoil on/off toggle switch. On the right side are a “B” button and a Pause button. You will have to calibrate each gun every time you power on the console – it doesn’t “remember” the parameters from last time. Calibration has you shooting targets in 8 zones (Corners and center edges) 3 times each. The gun’s buttons have everything players need to interact with all of the games, but the bundle I got for review also had the foot pedal for use with Time Crisis – the original arcade cabinet used a foot pedal to both reload and send the player into action.

The foot pedal feels solid and has four small grips on the bottom, but I did notice that on carpet, it tended to slide away from me while playing. On the plus side, players can also use the “A” button to take the place of the pedal should it feel cumbersome. The console itself is just a small black box with ports on the back for HDMI and power, and two spots on the front for you to plug in 2 guns or 1 gun and a foot pedal. There doesn’t seem to be any SD port or place to add a memory drive. Despite the gun’s cord being nice and long, the provided power cord and HDMI were both surprisingly short by comparison. The box also included several power adapters for other markets, and a lenticular display celebrating Time Crisis’ 30th anniversary. 

Software

Time Crisis is the crown jewel of the 4 games, make no mistake. The gun that the console comes with even has Time Crisis emblazoned on the sides. It was great getting to finally beat a game I’d spent many a quarter on in my youth – I never knew that you could finish it in under a half hour if you had perfect aim or endless continues. The gunplay feels snappy and responsive if you’re aiming down the sights like a well-trained officer of the law – but it gets hard if you try to shoot from the hip, especially in later levels that challenge you to shoot enemies in the distance. 

In fact, even with aiming down the sights, your character’s pistol in the game doesn’t aim perfectly. Far-off shots are hard to nail down, and late-game boss fights are brutal as you realize, “Oh, this is the section most people walked away from instead of feeding more quarters into the machine.” Luckily for anyone playing it on the G’AIM’E, extra credits to keep going are just a button press away. But keep in mind that Time Crisis wants you to do it fast, so even as you’re on the Continue screen, it’s keeping your time. 

Steel Gunner 1 & 2 were the type of arcade game that had the gun mounted to a flat surface in front of the screen; there was no reloading, just constant automatic fire as you mowed down robots and aliens. These are the games that made me turn off the recoil feature, which is housed inside the gun itself- there isn’t a physical component of the gun that recoils; it’s basically just vibrating. And after a full level of automatic fire, it feels like you’ve been working with heavy machinery. It doesn’t quite feel the same without it, but I preferred it off for these two games. 

I was impressed with the level of motion and destructability for early-90’s games, and while the challenge might be lower, it’s a blast to be able to play them side-by-side with a friend (or dual-wielding, if you’re crazy). My biggest gripe with these two is that in the first one, hitting continue (done with the A or B button) fires your missiles, a special weapon that you only get a few of each level. So every time you jump back in after dying, you lose 1 of your 4 shots of your best weapon. And in Steel Gunner 2, there’s a sequence where you’re tasked with escaping a facility in 30 seconds before it blows, and should you fail, you get an instant game-over screen that you don’t get to continue from, even with extra credits. That was definitely programmed to send some kids packing back in the day. I did run into a small audio bug in Steel Gunner 2 where the background music sputtered for half a level, twice, but both times it came back before the end of the level, and it didn’t slow down or alter the gameplay in any way. 

Point Blank is the most family-friendly game of the 4, and is a grab-bag of wild minigames that I would describe as, “WarioWare with guns.” Players will shoot round targets, cardboard cutouts of mobsters and ninjas, falling leaves, apples (William Tell style), torches, comets, shaped targets, fireworks, and more. The only problem is that everything after the easiest level wants you to have near-perfect aim in 10 seconds or less, and failure to do so makes you lose a life. Again, good thing you have unlimited continues thanks to the “Coin” button, but it could be disheartening to do your best only to be told “not good enough” on the “Beginner” levels. 

I had a lot of fun with the G’AIM’E system, but I’m not sure how much of it stems from nostalgia versus objective enjoyment of the 4 games it comes with. After beating them all (which should only take around 6-8 hours or less), the only thing left to do would be to move up the scoreboard or get better at the games. With no port or visible expansion slot, it’s just these 4 games and nothing else (there is no internet connectivity either). I would have loved it if we could have gotten Time Crisis 2, which expanded on the original in every way, including adding a 2nd player. The technology is great, but for the price point, it’s steep for 4 arcade games that were designed back when arcades were beginning to decline for the home market, which is ironic since this system is bringing those games onto a home console itself. Obviously, there’s a market for it (see their Kickstarter that raised over a million dollars), but I feel like you’d have to have a bit of nostalgia for these games to justify the price tag. 

A review bundle was provided by the publisher. 

TIME CRISIS™, POINT BLANK™, STEEL GUNNER™Series & 

©Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.  Tassei Denki Co., Ltd.