Originally released in arcades, Silent Scope differentiated itself from other gun games by focusing exclusively on sniping. Using a unique dual screen setup and taking place within Chicago and its surrounding areas, it’s a unique entry in the rail shooter genre, one that required some atypical solutions during its translation to home consoles.
Unlike the familiar lightgun setup, which detects flashing hitboxes to confirm shots, Silent Scope pairs a full size screen with a mounted sniper rifle replica, sporting a small screen embedded in the scope. The main screen displays a general overview of the situation, with a sniper cursor giving you a general idea of where your gun is pointed, and the scope displaying a zoomed in view for acquiring targets. Set at the correct distance, the two screens sell the illusion that you're looking through one screen into the other.
I suspect the actual mechanics involve something similar to LA Machineguns or other rail shooters like Space Harrier, where the controller communicates its absolute position on the swiveling mount to determine where it's pointing, not unlike an analog joystick.
The illusion is further sold by the heft of the controller, which weighs enough that you'll want to brace it against your shoulder, and even practice breath control to keep your aim steady. With your eye up to the scope you can quickly switch between the two views by opening and closing each eye. In my case, I used my left eye to watch the larger situation on the large screen, switching to my right eye to “zoom” into the cursor for precision aim, all without having to shift my body position.
For maximum efficiency you'll also want to develop smooth and confident targeting. The clock is always ticking, and each kill earns a few seconds, so being fast is essential to completing a run, since even if you get through an area you might find yourself running out of time during the boss fight.
Silent Scope doesn't fully simulate bullet physics, but bullets do have travel time, requiring you to lead moving targets, and creating small delays before hits are confirmed. Given the strict timing, I learned to carefully line up shots, pull the trigger, then immediately move to the next target, having them lined up as the bullet hit. It takes a certain amount of discipline and physical technique that many other arcade gun games don't emphasize, giving additional satisfaction to the process of developing muscle memory.
I’m lucky enough to have access to the arcade machine thanks to Galloping Ghost, an arcade located in the Chicago suburbs, and the cabinet felt oddly at home with the assortment of Midway titles created in the city. As for the actual depiction of the area--it’s not particularly accurate. Chicago’s downtown streets are oddly wide and spacious, and the highways and football stadium don’t have any notable characteristics, and as you chase the terrorists into Wisconsin, up through Milwaukee and Green Bay, there aren’t many notable locations. Still, it’s a neat bit of scene setting, especially with the area map that appears between stages, showing your route through the states as you progress.
The stages themselves are smartly paced, and branch into three different areas after the initial downtown battle, bringing variety to the start of each playthrough. After the downtown shootout you can either chase the terrorists across the rooftops, highway or football stadium. The stadium is the highlight, with one of the terrorists comedically carrying away the President’s daughter, as football players attempt to tackle him.
As you enter Wisconsin your ability to search for targets is tested, having you search through hotel windows to find hidden terrorists among civilians, then enter a mansion at night, using night vision to pick out targets in the dark. The night vision section is particularly exciting, as enemy flashlights can give away their positions, but alongside flares can temporarily blind you, making timing your shots tricky.
The variety of situations keep Silent Scope expertly paced and varied over its short run time, and keep its methodical gameplay full of tension. It did thankfully receive a number of console ports, though not without some compromises.
The one lightgun translation came with Silent Scope Complete, which ported the entire series, and came packaged alongside a rifle controller. The limitations of this controller give some insight into the difficulty of translating the game to standard lightgun setup. The scope functionality wasn’t replicated, but instead required you to sit at a certain distance from your TV, and look through the hollow scope into the scoped view on the TV. It does seem to track your movements, but requires the brightness of the TV to be set to the point where the colors are entirely blown out.
Because of the limitations of lightgun technology, most console ports are instead controlled with a standard controller or ,when possible, a mouse. The Dreamcast and PS2 ports both support the mouse, though oddly this isn’t mentioned in the packaging or manuals. It’s by and far the preferred method, and when mastered allows you to hit targets faster than even the arcade game.
Like the arcade game, a general targeting reticle shows your current cursor position, and hitting the right mouse button will zoom into the scoped view, with the left mouse button naturally firing. It’ll come naturally to anyone familiar with PC FPS games. The controller buttons are largely the same, with the analog stick instead moving the controller, and the option to add modifier buttons to speed up and slow down the cursor for more precision. It’s perfectly functional, but not ideal during moments where the camera is in constant motion.
Curiously, there’s even a GBA port. Like the console ports, it relies on a standard control scheme, but without any alternative control options due to its portable nature. Like many GBA games, it uses prerendered graphics, translating each scene into a static renders that fade between screens, and none of the dynamic camera movements of the arcade game represented. It also removes all the references to real world locations, most likely due to the original game coming out in 1999, while the GBA port released in 2002.
Unlike other lightgun games like SEGA’s House of the Dead series, Ghost Squad or LA Machineguns, Silent Scope didn’t receive any ports to the next generation of consoles, which ironically would have been perfect for it. The Wii’s infrared pointer technology would have been a perfect substitute for the arcade controls, similar to the way that Ghost Squad’s infrared tech was translated for the Wii port. Games like Time Crisis received both dedicated infrared pointer controllers, as well as PS Move support, and going a generation further, the Wii U had similar scope implementations in games like Star Fox Zero. Even the DS could have provided an upgrade to the GBA version, with its basic 3D capabilities, and built in dual screen setup, which could have allowed fast aiming with the touch screen, and simultaneous displays of the scoped and unscoped views.
Currently, the arcade versions of Silent Scope are not emulated, so the Dreamcast and PS2 ports remain the best way to experience. Thankfully, they provide a complete experience and are easy to emulate as well. It might even be preferable to playing on original hardware, since I found that the PS2 is picky about which USB mice it recognizes, since anything but the most basic, wired mouse without extra buttons would cause the game to malfunction.
Easy to pick up and put down, Silent Scope represents the spirit of a quintessential arcade shooter, but offers enough nuances and variation to keep it fresh for a long time. It easily ranks alongside the best of the arcade lightgun games, even if the series remains buried compared to its contemporaries.
