Ghost Squad heading to Wii

By Tom Bramwell Published 11 May, 2007

Lightgun shooter from SEGA AM2.

SEGA has revealed that its AM2 division is hard at work porting 2004 arcade lightgun title Ghost Squad to Wii. It's due for release around here in early 2008, the publisher said overnight.

Using the Wiimote as a lightgun, players get to join up with the four-man Ghost Squad (it stands for Global Humanitarian-Operation and Special Tactics Squad, believe it or not), but if you're conjuring images of blasting Casper then save them for another time, because the Ghost Squad's business is tackling international terrorism.

This they do across three mission locations, each comprising multiple levels with branching paths, making use of up to 25 unlockable weapons including machineguns, SMGs, sniper rifles, shotguns and crossbows. The original arcade machine had an SMG-style lightgun; using the Wiimote in lieu of that you'll also be able to defuse bombs and rescue hostages, with stealth apparently encouraged.

Naturally there will be multiplayer (for up to four people) in addition to Training, Arcade and Special modes, and while online play seems to be absent, players can expect online leaderboards for keeping up with their ghostly competition. SEGA's Gary Knight reckons that the Wii port does a good job of mirroring the arcade game's "instantly exciting gameplay" and "well thought out pace", and adds that the Wiimote works "perfectly as a lightgun", so let's hope he's right.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Obsequious #1 5 years ago

    Ghost Recon Advanced Wiifighter?

    You were all thinking it.

  • Machiavel #2 5 years ago

    I'd happily buy a shedload of fun lightgun games for the Wii (starting no doubt with the Resi 4 Wiimake), but not at full price, thankyouverymuch.

  • 3william56 #3 5 years ago

    I'm a little confused. Previous comment posts have indicated that the wiimote can't be used as a lightgun (i.e. it can't detect the exact part of the screen it's aimed at), it can only be used to move a cursor about the screen, albeit in a direct analogue manner. Zat so? Would take a lot of the joy out of a lightgun shooter if it is. Better than a joypad, for sure, but still not as immediate.

  • AcidSnake #4 5 years ago

    Must be some new type of calibration?

    I had an interesting discussion last time in a thread (don't remember with who) and a new calibration type might work...
    Maybe the 'zapper' is more than a shell and has new technology inside?

  • NewYork #5 5 years ago

    If you can use it to navigate menus, why can't you use it as a decent lightgun?

  • NewYork #6 5 years ago

    Oh, I think you're saying that when you've got the cursor on the enemy, you might not necessarily be pointing directly at him?

  • spongebob #7 5 years ago

    Wii is made for lightgun action. Also, NEW IP! Ok, not really, just an arcade port that hasn't been ported yet :)
    Edited by 1 at 11/05/07 @ 10:44

  • gallow #8 5 years ago

    Ghost Squad is my current favourite lightgun game which has usurped my previous favourite virtual Cop 2. Good news.

  • sanctusmortis #9 5 years ago

    BUYING!

    Loved the arcade machine.

  • monkie_king #10 5 years ago

    @New York: yeah, the point is that a light-gun shooter shouldn't have a cursor at all. You should just point and shoot, but so far the Wii hasn't proved itself accurate enough to manage an on-screen aid. Moving a cursor around really changes the feel--you're relying on visual feedback to aim, and you lose the snappy, reflexive feel that traditional gun games thrive on.

    @AcidSnake: I think that might have been me, over on the Resi on-rails shooter thread?

    By my reckoning, the basic obstacle is that Wiimote pointing is relative to the sensor-bar, not the screen. But you should be able to have a calibration screen to gather enough information to do the translation (shoot the centre and corners - I think DreamCast HOTD2 did this). I guess that Wii Play and things have avoided going down that route to remain accessible.

    Zelda gets you to align a bar on screen with the actual dimensions of your sensor bar, which should allow it to figure out the physical width of your TV set, and via the aspect ration, its physical height. It does pretty well on the X-axis, but since there's no "shoot the centre of the screen" step, it has to guess at the Y-axis (but then it's not an on-rails shooter, so it's good enough).

    I wonder if there are any EG-reading Wii developers out there who could shed some light on the issue?

    Full disclosure: I'm an old-school Namco GunCon shooter nerd (Point Blank, Time Crisis etc), and have high hopes that the Wii can replicate proper light-gnu action, since flat-panel TVs are otherwise killing it off =( I also once wrote a homebrew PS2 light-gun falling-blocks puzzler, but the less said about that the better.

    (edit: umm, that's "proper light-*gun* action". Unless Jeff Minter is planning something ...)
    Edited by 1 at 11/05/07 @ 13:19

  • karstux #11 5 years ago

    Wii Play has a simplistic "duck hunt" style light gun shooter. I think it has a cursor, but actually it worked pretty darn well. Well enough in fact that I have high hopes for this Ghost Squad game here. Reflexively shooting from the hip shouldn't be a problem, it was easy enough in Wii Play after a little while of getting used to it.

  • DaveTheHutt #12 5 years ago

    Don't think I've played Ghost Squad - what's the general consensus from the arcade loiterers on these here boards... assuming the port's good, are we looking at a quality game here? I do enjoy a good blast now and then...

  • Matsuo #13 5 years ago

    Awesome news! I've been waiting for such games to be announced! With this and RE:UC (albeit with more depth to it apparently) leading the pack, it could be the start of many shooting games for Wii :D

    It's true that the pointer isn't exactly pointing at the screen, rather pointing at the sensor bar. Still, it works a treat in RRR and Wii Play, so no worries there. Perhaps some day a developer will take the time to make a calibration option in there game, which measures your distant from the TV and the size of the TV.

    Btw, did anyone notice that at a certain distance, say 3m, the cursor points almost exactly at the same spot as you point your wiimote../

  • Ranger101 #14 5 years ago

    Ghost Squad was a good arcade game. They have timed sniper bits, loads of plot/game forks depending upon if you shoot a bad guy in different scenarios and bomb defusals.

    Londoners can find this game in the old Play2Win (I think its just called Amusements now) at the end of Oxford St. opposite the Plaza complex.

    Also, interestingly, the Arcade has on screen cursors as well despite using Light guns, so there's no change there in the Wii version.
    Edited by 1 at 11/05/07 @ 12:43

  • Ranger101 #15 5 years ago

    Oh and monkie_king: I appreciate that the Duck Hunt/GunCom style light gun game is the best style shooter you can get, I agree. I also think that from a developers point of view - and the fact that the console itself is aimed at the mainstream market rather than the hardcore - why bother with the R&D into doing actual light gun physics, when Joe Average won't give a shit if there is a cursor on the screen - infact they'd probably prefer it.

    It's cheaper, easier and probably more accessable to do an onscreen cursor based solution. Even if it's at the cost of hardcore enjoyment/skill.

  • monkie_king #16 5 years ago

    yeah, welcome to the mainstream. it's just a shame that advances in technology have killed the old-style gun game -- the genre getting was pretty stagnant anyway, to be honest, but it'd be nice to have a substitute for TC: Project Titan once my CRT telly gives up the ghost.

    (btw, I'd be surprised if it takes much extra work to derive screen-relative co-ords if you know where the corners are -- the controller libs already do 90% of trig anyway, to get the sensor-relative planar co-ords).
    Edited by 1 at 11/05/07 @ 13:12

  • karstux #17 5 years ago

    I think "true" light gun function ought to be possible with the wiimote as well, it would just require a 5-point calibration. I.e., shoot every corner and the center of the screen once, and interpolate between them after that. Actually, three corners would suffice - the fourth corner and the center could be used to increase calibration accuracy, though.

  • monkie_king #18 5 years ago

    Yes indeed. In fact, you only need opposite diagonal corners to get (minX, minY), (maxX, maxY), but more calibration points lets you average out the errors. All this assumes you sit pretty central and square-on to the screen, but you ought to be anyway, for a shooter.

    Just wondering why no-one has done this yet, or whether they have and I've missed it. Red Steel would be a prime candidate but goes with the cursor approximation, looks like Far Cry is the same, not sure about the miscellaneous other FPSes. None of those is a pure gun game though.

    There's a fair amount of classic arcade shooter IP that's becoming unplayable due to LCDs and plasmas taking over -- I'd love to be able to buy a Wiimote-based "Time Crisis Collection", or "Virtua Cop Anthology". It would also be good if that gun "shell" thing doesn't suck.

  • 3william56 #19 5 years ago

    Cheers for the info. Figured as much.

    I think the problem would be that even if you calibrated by shooting the corners, the starting position of the wiimote would affect the calculated result. So if you (for example) shifted on the sofa sideways or handed the wiimote to someone else, it'd throw off the calibration math. So a recalibrate after every game, or even level would be required, particularly if good accuracy was needed.

    Or sit on a tube of superglue...