{"id":1158,"date":"2015-10-19T15:12:05","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T20:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=1158"},"modified":"2015-10-19T16:08:59","modified_gmt":"2015-10-19T21:08:59","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-nes-zapper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1158\/retro-scan-of-the-week-nes-zapper","title":{"rendered":"[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> The Gray Zapper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nintendo<\/a>Released because Americans like guns<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The Nintendo Entertainment System turned 30 years old in the US yesterday — well, according to Nintendo, anyway. That date is still a little fuzzy, in my opinion. Still, it’s close enough.<\/p>\n

When the NES turned 25 (exactly five years ago today — creepy!), I wrote a few features about this classic system like NES Oddities<\/a> for Technologizer and a NES workbench teardown<\/a> for PCWorld.<\/p>\n

This year, I have done nothing to celebrate except scan this NES Zapper. It’s a beaut.<\/p>\n

Just a few days ago, the designer of the NES hardware revealed<\/a> that the NES shipped with the Zapper because “Americans in general are interested in gun.” Indeed they are!<\/p>\n

In 1989, Nintendo changed the dark grey parts of the Zapper to “blaze orange” to meet new US Federal regulations about toy guns<\/a>. That regulation involved required orange plugs or paint at the tips of the barrels of realistic or imitation toy guns.<\/p>\n

The regulation passed because people were robbing banks with toy guns, and the orange plug was supposed to let cops know the difference between a deadly weapon and a hunk of plastic. (Turns out the plug requirement doesn’t work as planned<\/a>. But it did ruin the toy gun industry.)<\/p>\n

The Zapper isn’t exactly a realistic toy gun, but acting with its usual overabundance of caution, Nintendo went way beyond a barrel plug<\/a>. Either way, I am proud to say that, to this date, no one has ever been shot and killed by a NES Zapper.<\/p>\n

P.S. In January, I scanned a line drawing of the Zapper<\/a> from the NES manual. You may enjoy that as well.<\/small><\/p>\n

[ From Video Games & Computer Entertainment, January 1991, p.50-51]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> Do you think someone could rob a bank with a NES Zapper? What about in the 1980s?<\/p>\n

—
\nSee Also:<\/em>
\nNES Zapper Diagram<\/a> (Retro Scan, 2015)
\nModel No. NES-001<\/a> (Retro Scan, 2010)
\nNES Oddities<\/a>
\nInside the Nintendo Entertainment System<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Released because Americans like guns The Nintendo Entertainment System turned 30 years old in the US yesterday — well, according to Nintendo, anyway. That date is still a little fuzzy, in my opinion. Still, it’s close enough. When the NES turned 25 (exactly five years ago today — creepy!), I wrote a few features about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,27,26,9],"tags":[83,88,990,124,143,1197,60,989],"class_list":["post-1158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-game-info-and-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-retrogaming","tag-anniversaries","tag-freelance-work","tag-light-gun","tag-nes","tag-nintendo","tag-physical-objects","tag-retro-scan","tag-zapper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}