Should you miss the times of Time Disaster, Virtua Cop, and even Duck Hunt, then Arkade Gaming Gun is a PC peripheral that needs to be firmly in your sights. At this week’s Gamescom Asia x Thailand Recreation Present 2026, I managed to get a brief hands-on demonstration with this motion-controlled gun controller that’s as a consequence of launch someday in 2027 and got here away with a robust first impression regardless of taking a couple of moments to wrap my head round its distinctive management setup.
What’s nice in regards to the Arkade Gaming Gun straight off the bat is that its proprietary expertise doesn’t require a webcam or Wii-style sensor bar to make it work along with your show. It’s fully plug and play, you join its charging dock as much as your PC by way of USB-C, and it doubles as a wi-fi receiver for the gun itself. A tool supervisor permits you to customise its button format and calibrate the monitoring efficiency, and away you go.
You principally cradle the Arkade in a two-handed grip. The D-Pad or WASD-style motion of your character is dealt with by a thumbstick jutting out the aspect of its chunky barrel – which pulses with customisable LED graphics like a billboard in a Blade Runner skyline – with a pair of buttons on the opposite aspect used for different strikes like leaping, and controls on the rear for weapon-switching.
In any other case the precise aiming is dealt with by bodily pointing the gun itself at your goal, and that’s the place issues turned initially disorientating throughout my transient hands-on. Dropped right into a demo of Prodeus, a boomer shooter from developer Bounding Field Software program, it took a second for me to get snug with strafing and aiming on the similar time. This was largely as a result of to activate the aiming skill of Arkade it’s essential to calmly grip the capacitive contact floor of its set off. Relaxation your finger on the set off and the onscreen crosshair will transfer to no matter goal that you just intention the gun at. Take your finger off the set off, nonetheless, and also you’re principally locked within the route that you just’re going through, as if you had been taking part in with a mouse and keyboard and immediately slipped your hand off the mouse.
As soon as I did get a really feel for it, although, it largely turned second nature. I even began instinctively re-centring myself on the fly with delicate actions of my set off finger, not in contrast to while you’re aiming with a mouse and also you’re pushing in the direction of the sting of the mouse pad, and also you choose it up and place it again within the center with out actually occupied with it. It’s a reasonably tough factor to clarify, however principally as soon as it clicks it feels extremely enjoyable to see down the Arkade’s sights and blaze away at a room of Doom-style demons with no noticeable compromises to the liberty of your actions. I particularly like how its set off options two phases of operation – a half-squeeze principally mimics a proper mouse-button by zooming in barely in your goal, whereas a full squeeze fires the shot.
In accordance with its creator and CEO Joshua Fuchs, the Arkade Gaming Gun isn’t solely designed for first-person shooters. Apparently it additionally helps plenty of third-person shooters as properly, from Fortnite to the Resident Evil 3 remake. It will also be used along with different peripherals to additional improve the immersion, with Fuchs displaying me a video instance of one in every of his workforce members utilizing the Arkade Gaming Gun in tandem with a racing wheel to execute drive-by shootings in Grand Theft Auto 5; one hand on the wheel and the opposite pulling the set off on the Arkade. I’m unsure how a lot peripheral-juggling and customized controller-mapping can be required to play all the recreation that means, but it surely definitely instructed that gamers might have plenty of enjoyable getting inventive with this gadget.
For now the Arkade gaming gun solely helps PC, Mac, and Steam OS, however Fuchs has hopes of bringing it to consoles sooner or later sooner or later. The gun itself feels actually solidly constructed, however mild sufficient that I don’t think about it might develop into too tiring to wield it for prolonged gaming periods.
One factor that does really feel a little bit heavy although, is the value. Arkade Gaming Gun is launching at $399 USD, though there’s presently the choice of scoring one at a reduced charge should you preorder from Arkade’s web site. That’s a reasonably hefty value to pay to convey a sense of old skool nostalgia to new college capturing, however should you’ve acquired the funds for it then based mostly on my transient blast with it this mild gun feels prefer it may very well be value a shot.
Tristan Ogilvie is a senior video editor at IGN based mostly in Sydney, Australia. He has 25 years of expertise overlaying video video games, having served as Deputy Editor on Official PlayStation 2 Journal Australia and as Editor of Official Xbox 360 Journal Australia, earlier than becoming a member of IGN in 2009. Yow will discover him on Bluesky @tristanogilvie.bsky.social