Lets Remember...Captain Power!
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/6213/faq.html
http://www.captainpower.com/
http://www.yesterdayland.com/popoped...day/sa1244.php
http://home.cogeco.ca/~kroland/systems/CaptainPower/
Not quite a videogame, and not quite NOT a videogame. You buy a light gun molded into a plastic toy resembling a fighter jet, and use it to shoot at your television. Your targets manifest themselves either on the short-lived live-action television series, or on one of 3 videotapes (sold separately) sporting anime dogfights.
The TV show was forgettable- save for an interesting premise poorly executed. The animated videotapes ROCKED. They are purely anime, with live action bits at the beginning and the end (skip those). The animation is well-done even by today’s standards. The dogfights and whatnot depicted over a post-apocalyptic Earth are cool- and worth watching even today.
You use your light gun to shoot at the blinking red targets on screen. You get one “point” for each hit you make- as indicated by a crude electronic sound from the toy. The game “shoots back” in the form of blinking yellow. A “hit” subtracts one “point “. If your point count drops to zero, a little mechanism in your toy jet will cause the pilot- your official Captain Power action figure- to eject from the cockpit.
The light gun toys can also be used against each other in a dark room. However, there were few kids back then who bought Captain Power stuff. This unique toy franchise never really flew.
The 3 anime tapes are still frequent visitors to my VCR.
Who remembers this unique videogame-like thing from the 1980’s?