Talk:Super Scope

In the second paragraph, it says that "The Super Scope was popular with fans and game developers." In the last section, it says the opposite: "The Super Scope was never very commercially successful.... Critics blasted it as a bulky and cumbersome device that was difficult to use... Consumers were also frustrated by the Super Scope's quick battery consumption.... In addition, the device was hurt by a lack of compatible software..." Exactly the opposite. Twilight Realm 22:53, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and a picture would be nice. Twilight Realm 22:53, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Please clarify

This passage makes zero sense to me (despite understanding quite well how normal light guns work). Ths scope monitors the scope? LCDs have no scope? I can't even fathom what was -meant- to be written.

"the Super Scope monitors the actual scope in the image to find the position of a sprite with high precision. Upon firing, the Scope relays information about where on the screen it is aimed to an infared receiver on top of the television set. This receiver is plugged into controller slot two of the SNES. Some modern LCD televisions are incompatible with the super scope due to the lack of a scope for the light sensor to monitor." Alvis 20:29, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Disputed

I have three major problems with this article's description of the inner workings of the Super Scope:

1. The explanation is inconsistent with my personal experience with the accessory. Specifically, I believe that the gun is capable of giving more information than simple "hit or miss", and is able to give specific information about where the gun is aimed. The explanation given by the article would not, as I understand it, allow this behavior.

2. The wording is unclear, but the article's apparent indication that an inexpensive battery operated video game accessory from the early 90's would be able to perform the digital image processing necessary to "find the position of a sprite with high precision", seems unlikely to me. Optical mice require less computing power than this, yet they were not available at the time cheaply, if at all.

3. None of the article's sources make any mention of the technical details of the Super Scope. This is generally a bad thing although it happens. But because of the fact that the explanation is itself suspicious, I think careful examination is necessary.

I will be attempting to either verify the current explanation and reword it so that it is less confusing, or, if the current explanation is incorrect, find a suitable one with good sources. If anyone else can find anything, I'd appreciate it.

Mistercow 01:47, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Super Scope 6

Why does Super Scope 6 redirect here? It's not the same as the accessory itself and the article has no information about the cartridge itself. This should be changed. UrQuanKohrAh 07:43, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Found the patent

I looked up the patent that Nintendo of America filed for the Super Scope. I've tried to summarize what the patent application says on how the Scope actually works. If anyone can clarify some of the more technical terms like "waveform-shaped" or "horizontal scan cycle" please do so as I am not familiar with those terms. Thanks!

Excellent. OK, so here's what I gather from the patent, in sort of laymen's terms. You can think of the scope on the gun as essentially a rudimentary camera. This camera is, I think, calibrated to only pick up specific near-IR light, which is emitted from the small grey receiver box which is plugged into the SNES. The gun finds the little "dot" created by that IR light, and sends the dot's coordinates to the receiver. This is where the "horizontal scan cycle" comes in. It's a lot like a CRT in a TV, shooting a ray across the screen in a zigzag pattern. It's really just a way of packaging the data so that it can be easily transferred over IR. So then, based on where the "dot" was in the picture that the "camera" took, the Nintendo can determine where the "camera" was pointed.

Obviously, this is not a very encyclopedic explanation, but I want to see if others agree with my interpretation of the patent. If so, I can put it into encyclopedic terms to go into the article. Let me know if I've been totally incoherent on any/all points.

Mistercow 15:48, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this is quite correct; although I haven't seen the patent, I know way too much about how the SNES works. For the receiver to be emitting the "dot" that the scope picks up, it would need to have a signal faster than the 60 Hz joypad poll from the SNES to properly synchronize with the display, due to the way the aimed position is reported back to the SNES. This is simply not present.

Obviously, the scope only has 7 wires connecting it to the console. Two (#1 and #7) are used for power and ground. #3 is the 'latch', which tells a joypad (or the scope) to record the state of its buttons. #2 is the 'clock', which tells a joypad to put the next bits of data (e.g. a button's state) on each of the two data pins (#4 and #5) (only the multitap seems to use #5 though). 'latch' and 'clock' can be controlled directly via registers $4016 and $4017, or the console can be set to automatically trigger 'latch' and read 16 bits of data from all 4 data pins (2 per port) into registers $4218-$421f at the end of each frame. Pin #6 can be set by the scope and by game writes to register $4201 (bit 6 for port 1 and bit 7 port 2), in a logical-AND fashion. It can also be read by either side (via register $4213).[1][2]

The idea of a camera is correct. If you've ever taken a picture of a CRT television screen with a fast shutter speed, you'll have seen that the camera only shows a portion of the screen illuminated with the rest dark. I believe the scope operates on the same effect, and simply sets a 1 or 0 on pin #6 depending on whether it sees the light or not. The scope also returns 5 bits of information (and 3 zeros) on pin #4 when read as a joypad: Fire, Cursor, Turbo, Pause, zero, zero, "never saw the TV", and zero.[3]

The determination of the pixel coordinates where the gun was aimed is actually done within the console, by the PPU2 chip. Pin #6 of port 2 is connected to pin 29 on the PPU2 chip,[4] and when this pin transitions from 1 to 0 the PPU2 "latches" the X and Y position of the pixel it is currently rendering for output to the television (perhaps with some correction factor). At the end of the frame, the game simply reads this latched position from registers $212c and $212d. This explains why the gun must be plugged into port 2: port 1's pin #6 is not connected to the PPU2. It also explains why bit 7 of $4201 must be set to 1 for the gun to work: if it is 0, the 1 to 0 transition can never happen.[5]

The calibration is probably to account for the specific delay in the PPU->TV->Scope->receiver->console->PPU2 path. Pixels are output at about 5.37 MHz, so a 1 microsecond difference in the delay would change the latched position by about 5.37 pixels. Anomie 02:35, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Additional Information

Your interpretation is basically correct. Although I don't know the terms you have asked about, I do understand the basic inner workings of the super scope. The biggest point missing was the calibration routine. It was required by all games to tell the console where the receiver/transmitter box was in relation to the screen. The routine consisted of a target of some sort in the center of the screen. The player would line the sight on the "bulls eye" of the target and press fire. The SNES would calculate where the dot was in relation of the screen center and be able to know where the player was firing in game. If the player moved the transmitter during the game he or she would have to re-calibrate the scope or its accuracy would be negatively affected. Ryan 975 10:52, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Wireless?

I had one of these many years ago, and I am sure it was wired rather than wireless, I certainly never bought any batterys for it, unless in the UK we got a different super scope than the USA 88.109.229.30 15:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

• The US version definitely required batteries, and as far as I know, the UK version was no different. The infrared sensor was connected to the system itself, but the gun wasn't. Perhaps you're thinking of a different gun or you had a bootleg version? -Jacquismo 03:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Prehaps it was, I have seen ones modifyed so that they could be plugged into a controler port and get the power from that, I don't know how common they were though. Golden Dragoon 08:10, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Pure Pwnage

I remember seeing this device on Pure Pwnage, id add it to "Cameos and other appearances" but I cant remember which episode it appeared in.--Raifox 05:54, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Zapper's popularity

It is shaped like a bazooka and is the successor of the vastly popular NES Zapper.

Was the Zapper really "vastly popular"? Only a handful of games supported it. It was universal because it was included with many NES consoles, but that doesn't make it popular. - furrykef (Talk at me) 23:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Makes it popular in terms of sales though, which I think is what is meant by that statement. Golden Dragoon 08:29, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

European name

Here in Italy I've always heard of it as "Super scope", not "Nintendo scope", as the article suggests. --Lo'oris 22:00, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

no answer yet? I add [citation needed] --Lo'oris 22:01, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps "Europe" is too broad, and it was called different names in different countries. Also, it may have been marketed as "Nintendo Scope" and simply called "Super Scope" unofficially. Look at the image for proof that it was called "Nintendo Scope" in at least one place. Anomie 00:32, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Searching ebay I found nothing new: people still call it "Super Scope"12, but some boxes say "Nintendo Scope". So it's not only me who use only the original name. I guess the Nintendo official magazine called it Super Scope, despite the name was later changed, but I've no idea where did I put it, so I cannot check. Further investigations pending (maybe) --Lo'oris 12:53, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

"Nintendo Scope" was indeed the official name given in Europe, this should be common knowledge by now... The term "Super Scope" might have been used by magazines before the PAL version was finished. ICEknight 15:41, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I live in the UK, and never found anything or anyone referring to it as a Nintendo Scope. I'll see if I can dig through my old SNES boxes and find any literature to dispute this.

Same here. I live in Ireland and remember it being sold as the Super Scope in one of the local shops. I was considering removing it since it's unsourced but I'll leave that for someone more brave! Karsini (talk) 23:40, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Also added a note about DHCP Superscope —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.137.159.61 (talk) 15:54, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Melee

Should Super Smash Bros. Melee be mentioned? The Super scope is a weapon in that game.1yodsyo1 15:40, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

It was mentioned until the entire trivia section was removed. Anomie 18:05, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Is it a problem if it is mentioned in the introductory area? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.239.121.207 (talk) 00:40, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it would be a problem. See WP:LEAD. Anomie⚔ 15:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

About criticism

"The Super Scope received many complaints from many gamers indicating that the hardware was heavy and unbalanced making it difficult to use (as compared to the simple lightweight NES Zapper), high physical risks of severe headaches, eye strain, and arm pain, and the hardware had a very poor battery life"

Fucking pussies, I used a real rocket launcher in the army for all the time