[itishappy]

It was a major genre on the Wii. The Wii Zapper was an optional attachment that gave the WiiMote a pistol grip. Titles off the top of my head include CoD III, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Cronicles, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, and House of Dead II & III Return.

I think the main reason that it never took off much was that it kinda sucked. It worked great when it worked, but the tracking was often glitchy and it was super frustrating when you're counting bullets to have the occasionally shot go offscreen. I have a feeling we had a higher tolerance for this with Duck Hunt due to the novelty and arcade games due to the format. (I feel like arcade games tend to avoid showing you a reticle for this very reason, but I don't have data to back this up.)

That being said, I still ended up beating Metroid and both Resident Evils, so they were still super fun!

Also, I was in Dave and Busters recently and they had Time Crisis 5. Beat that too!

[jrm4]

FWIW, I had until now completely forgotten that I was playing these games at home, on a PC with a "shooter" experience.

They were mouse controlled, but I had a gyration air mouse -- (with the clever thing of instead of requiring infrared, it just had a 3rd button that had to be depressed for actual movement)

[cubefox]

I'm surprised you call it glitchy. I heard elsewhere that Resident Evil 4 on Wii was easier than the GameCube original because the aiming was more precise than with a stick.

[itishappy]

They can both be true! It worked great probably 97% of the time, but the 3% where it flicked 20px to the left for a frame or lost tracking entirely add up over the course of a boss fight. Missing when using a joysticks feels like a skill issue. Missing when using the WiiMote could be frustrating.