Silent Scope

Overview

Silent Scope is an arcade light gun shooter developed and published by Konami in 1999. The game casts the player as an elite police marksman taking part in a series of high-stakes sniper missions. The game is typical of many arcade light gun shooters; it uses mechanics such as limited time which can be extended by fast, precise shooting and penalties for damaging civilians. What sets the game apart, however, is that it is played with a large plastic sniper rifle mounted directly to the arcade cabinet. The rifle features a functional "scope;" the player may peer into it to afford him or herself a greatly magnified view of a small portion of the cabinet's larger screen. This scope was required for engaging enemies at the enormous distances the game presents.

The Rifle

The game's famous plastic sniper rifle is a replica of an actual police marksman rifle, the Heckler and Koch PSG1, which is also featured prominently in Konami's Metal Gear Solid franchise. The rifle's "scope" does not actually magnify the screen; it is, in fact, a smaller screen contained within the rifle itself, showing a magnified view of where the game detects the rifle to be aiming. Although the game is generally accepted to fall under the umbrella of light gun shooters, the rifle itself is not actually a light gun; rather, the position on the screen at which it is pointing is communicated to the game via the analog hard mount on which the rifle sits.

Console Versions

The console versions of the game made the transition largely intact, although much of the game's allure was lost without the large, unique rifle peripheral. Instead, the player aimed a zoomed-in cursor representing the scope of the protagonist's weapon.