light guns

Light guns are video game controllers shaped like pistols or rifles that players point at a screen to aim and shoot.

They work by detecting light from the display, typically through a sensor in the barrel.

Popular in arcade shooters and home console games from the 1980s through the 2000s, light guns became largely obsolete with the shift to flat-panel displays, which lack the scan timing that made the technology work: Duck Hunt, Time Crisis, House of the Dead.