benjaminer

Iiiinteresting. Maybe they're working on a revised version.

@mr_benn yep and I sent the same message on Kickstarter DM too for good measure. The email seems to be the one that did the trick though.

@mr_benn in terms of money hitting my account, nothing yet but I've had separate automated emails from Pledgebox and Kickstarter confirming the refund. I then had an email from G'aim'e:

Thank you for contacting us, and we sincerely apologize for the experience you have had with our product.

We have now processed a full refund back to your original payment method.

As our project was priced and settled in Japanese Yen, all refunds are issued in JPY.

Your refund amounts are as follows:
PledgeBox: 5,940 JPY
Kickstarter: 33,380 JPY

We have also attached a return shipping label to this email.

Please use the label to return the product to us at your convenience.

We are truly sorry that the unit did not meet your expectations or our intended product standards. Thank you again for supporting our campaign, and if you require any further assistance, please feel free to reach out to us anytime.

@mr_benn it seems I've wangled my way into a refund! I'm assuming you're in the UK too (clue in the handle?!)

I argued that it wasn't a typical Kickstarter pledge and was in fact a regular retail pre-order given it was available for order at Argos already.

@Damo any tips on finding that sweet spot? I'd love to give it another shot

😎

I backed this on Kickstarter and got my kit yesterday. This evening was first chance to give it a go, and I have to say I am incredibly disappointed.

I've tried on my 55" TV and my 32" monitor both at recommended distances. The accuracy is allover the place. You can hold the gun perfectly still and repeatedly pull the trigger and see your shots jump around a fairly large area.

The poor accuracy makes it essentially unplayable - and not in the OMG my game is running at 58fps and not 60fps way - I cleared something like 2 out of 12 stages on Point Blank, and I didn't even get past the helicopter in Time Crisis before running of time. I'm sure this is partly a skill issue, but I have paid my dues on these games in the arcade (back in the day and more recently) as well as on PS1.

Further, the G'aim'e has a perceptible delay, which not only causes more issues with accuracy but also makes the whole thing feel less satisfying to play. I am fortunate enough to have a (small) CRT and a PS2 + Guncon and there is just no comparison.

Finally - the software... I have no issues with the game selection, and I quite like the fact there's no marketplace or online services. But the actual user experience isn't great. Having to skip the tutorial video on every boot is just silly - perhaps they're expecting will only play this once every few months and forget how to use it? The calibration process is also quite tedious requiring a total of 27 well aimed shots each time you power up the system.

I'm trying to find positives here... The gun feels nice, the little box is inoffensive (and looks like a PAL PS1 case), I liked the pack-in merch, and, ehm, I like the braided orange cable on the guns?

I do quite like the rumble based kickback which I was expecting to hate. In some ways, I prefer it to the solenoid on the Sinden which was very noisy and rapidly faded in power after a few consecutive shots.

So disappointed with the G'aim'e and surprised to read a positive review on this website.

**EDIT**

I've plugged one of the guns into my laptop and behaves like as a mouse and didn't need any calibration - so there may be some hope to repurpose these as lightguns for emulation. It seems that pulling the trigger is part of what causes the inaccuracy as I could see the mouse pointer jump around when I pulled the trigger .