Hostage-taker wields Sega light gun

This gentleman held a woman hostage for ten hours. His weapon? A Sega light gun. Rob has the details over at Boing Boing Gadgets. "Hostage held for 10 hours with Sega light gun"

[#1 posted by Pedro , March 5, 2009 4:05 PM]

Pff, and people still make fun of Sega! Eheh!

[#2 posted by Seedouble , March 5, 2009 5:21 PM]

Haha oh wow. I think police need to hire young people for their view on these things sometimes. Remember the Aqua Teen Hunger Force alien "bombs"? A teenager would be like "dude, it's probably and ad. Ask the creators of the show if they know about it". In this case: "Dude, it's a light gun. lol"

[#3 posted by Bernbaum , March 5, 2009 7:25 PM]

Be sure to check out the hilarious photoshops of the incident over at the NeoGAF forums, where this was posted last week:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=353805

[#4 posted by mdh , March 5, 2009 11:57 PM]

think he'll get a light sentence?

[#5 posted by sf , March 6, 2009 2:16 AM]

Police would have to treat it as a real firearm regardless if it *appears* to them as a sega light gun toy.
It wouldn't be so funny if the sega LG shell was used as a convenient casing for a homemade 'saturday night special' firearm.
It could have a big flag dangling from it stating "this is not a real gun" and it wouldn't matter if the guy welding it suggests it is real and threatens to use it.
Lucky not to get a headshot from a police marksman.

[#6 posted by Ugly Canuck , March 6, 2009 5:36 AM]

It is not what it is which is important...it's what the victim/hostage thinks, and what the police think, that matters: think Dillinger escaping stir with a "gun" made from carved soap and blackened with shoe polish.
Yes: he is lucky a police sniper did not take him out.
And "game guns" ought to be made of a bright yellow or orange plastic.

[#7 posted by ivan256 , March 6, 2009 7:28 AM]

blackened with shoe polish [...] And "game guns" ought to be made of a bright yellow or orange plastic.

[#8 posted by Strophe , March 6, 2009 8:53 AM]

@Canuck

Easy there, Mom. ;) Lots of models are. Mine NES lightgun was bright orange, and that was a good long time ago.

I wonder what happened to this type of peripheral? We never see games that require lightguns anymore, and the venerable first person shooter isn't losing any steam.

[#9 posted by Kevin , March 7, 2009 3:15 PM]

@STROPHE "I wonder what happened to this type of peripheral? We never see games that require lightguns anymore, and the venerable first person shooter isn't losing any steam."

The original XBOX had a light gun available towards the end of it's life, but very few games were made which used it. With the "gun" type accessories for the WiiMote, we may see more lightgun games available for that platform.

Frankly, the lightgun is limited as an input device, and there never were all that many good game styles where it made sense -- if you look at arcade games, there were basically three kinds of lightgun games: The target gallery, the amusement park "on rails" fixed path type of game, and the one trick "gimmick" games (sniper rifle, bazooka, etc).

[#10 posted by Strophe , March 12, 2009 9:49 AM]

@Kevin

As an appendix to this tangent, I received House of the Dead: Overkill for the Wii a couple days ago, and an off-brand attachment to fit the Wiimote into a handgun frame where you can pull the trigger. It's fantastic, and the game itself is incredibly excellent. (Gone is all the Engrish script-writing, replaced with hysterical dialogue that smacks of ATHF and Sealab + naughty language. It works hard for its clichés, then proudly acknowledges every one of them by the end of the game.)

It's taking me back!