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We chat with Heena Lakhani about G'AIM'E's new gun controller.
"Hey everybody, I'm over at GAMI here at CES in Las Vegas.
I'm looking at a really cool product, I think.
It's like a revival of the old school point and shoot guns that you can actually point at your screen and like old school play a game like Time Crisis, for example."
"So could you tell me a bit more about how you came up with the idea of developing the product?
Yeah, so late 2023, early 2024, our development team came up with the technology."
"We loved the idea.
We were trying to see how we could bring back these arcade retro classics back into the homes of the modern people and the modern generation to modern TVs."
"But we haven't been able to since CRTs.
People haven't been able to play light gun games in the home environment unless it's some complicated setup.
So the team at Tassai Denki, my team at Tassai Denki, presented the idea and the technology to Bandai Namco team and they thought what better way to kind of celebrate 30 years of Time Crisis and bring this back."
"Could you tell me a bit more about the technology behind the gun?
How does it work?
The technology behind the gun is pretty simple.
So we've got it's using pre-trained AI data, thousands and hundreds of thousands of data preloaded onto the system."
"It can recognize any screen size from 15 inches to 150 inches.
The technology is within the gun itself.
You've got a camera here.
The system can see and recognize any screen size."
"So the only thing that you'd really have to do is plug in the system, make sure you calibrate, and you're ready to go.
Okay, cool.
So you have like four games you're launching with and these are like some of the classic games, right?
We have four amazing titles."
"We have the legendary Time Crisis 1 because we're celebrating 30 years.
Time Crisis 1 is one player only.
So you have the gun and the pedal to play with.
Bandai Namco have also blessed us with Point Blank, which is two player, and Still Gunner 1 and 2, which is two player as well."
"Still Gunner 1 and 2 has actually never been brought to the home console.
It's always been in the arcades.
So these are two great, amazing titles that now consumers can play.
Yeah, exactly."
"And like the Point Blank game, it's actually a lot of games inside one game, right?
It's a lot of mini games.
Point Blank is one of my favorite games."
"I remember playing this with my brother as a child in the arcades.
A lot of mini games, a few minutes long, target shooting, and you can just play for hours and hours and hours with friends, with family, with kids, drinking game."
"It's just really to bring that kind of home family entertainment into your living room.
Yeah, it seems like a real fun game to play like socially, not just by yourself, but involve other people."
"So is this also your target audience, like families even?
Our target audience is definitely for time crisis fans, of course, and obviously bringing this to the home environment, family fun, family fun entertainment, friends."
"It's super portable because the system is the guns itself and the console and some cables that you connect to the TV.
And as you can see, we're in a hotel suite here today.
You can travel with the guns and play it wherever, anywhere in the world."
"Yeah, really nice.
And so I think you've already launched and delivered the first samples to the Kickstarter.
Yeah, we started the project."
"We launched the project in June, towards the end of June.
It was a 60-day campaign.
We actually hit our target of 50,000 within the first 10 minutes.
When we ended the campaign 16 hours later, we hit 1.1 million U.S. dollars."
"There was well over 7,000 backers.
And we've shipped out, and they've all been delivered.
So all the Kickstarter backers have now received their products.
They started receiving it in early November, and I think by early December, the majority of all the Kickstarter backers have received all their units."
"It's been a very successful campaign, very overwhelming, but we've been very pleased with it and very blessed with the results that we've had.
And now we are here now at CES, working on talking to media outlets like yourself and working on distribution partners."
"Oh, yeah, so it's going to be available in many European countries in the coming months?
It's already available in many European countries.
It's already available in Australia as well, and we're working on now how we're going to work out the distribution side with U.S., North America, and South America."
"All right, great.
Well, thanks so much for the interview.
Thank you very much."
