Getting A Giga Shot (JET Games USA)

It has been a while since I had the opportunity to get my hands on a new arcade game. Frankly, things have just not been improving for my situation at the arcade, and I’ve already sold off a few machines, with the intent to sell more of my parts and game boards that have been collecting dust in my backroom. I also am considering holding a fundraiser to help us move to a new location.

In the course of looking for ways to boost the business, I got to talking to JET Games USA, and in that course of that, I now have one of their latest games on test, which we first saw at IAAPA 2025, and it goes by the name GIGA SHOT. This is the first JET game I’ve ever had, and it’s also one of the largest games I’ve ever operated over 18 years. Let’s take a look.

GIGA SHOT: The Intro

For a refresher, GIGA SHOT is the fourth game in the “Shot” series, which first started with Quick Shot, then you had Big Shot and Mega Shot. Mega Shot was quite the impressive piece and was one of the most talked about games of IAAPA 2023 when it debuted, thanks to it’s form factor, but mostly due to the realistic rifle weapons. Quick/Big Shot had already pushed the envelope there by reintroducing metallic gun controllers to the industry (back in the ’70s and a little in the ’80s you did have metal gun controls, but when the light-gun game became a thing in the ’90s, we saw a switch over to plastic). If you’ve ever shot a real gun before, then you know that heft is a part of the feel there, and when it’s light and plastic, it feels more like a toy. All of the Shot games also powered the feedback by using an air compressor, which also makes for a more impressive feel than a solenoid.

Mega Shot was made available in two styles – a single giant portrait screen and a dual portrait setup that seemed to push the boundaries of what you could do with screen sizes in the business. So, how do you follow-up on all of that? With an enormous 86″ monitor, four player stations instead of two, and shotguns. These guns have realistic sights on them, which is a really cool effect that you rarely find in arcades. There is also a player camera, although where the game doesn’t show the leaderboards, it feels a little superfluous.

GIGA SHOT began shipping in February of this year.

(Note: this video below shows a prototype model; as you’ll see, they made some changes to the cabinet and software)

GIGA SHOT: The Setup

It took a little bit of time to resolve getting the GIGA SHOT, mainly due to the freight cost and me just not having the cash I needed to get it here (freight on something of this size from Florida to Utah is not cheap, especially with gas being what it is right now). At length though, it arrived and like often seems to happen, I had little warning from the driver. He apparently tried to call me, but my phone showed nothing; the freight carrier called and gave me his number, where then I was able to let him know where to go. I was also fortunate that my brother was nearby so that he could come and help without having to wait.

GIGA SHOT comes in three boxes, although two of them are strapped together (the console and the light-box marquee). Getting that one off of the truck was fine, but the monitor portion – which all comes as one piece – that was a different story. As you can tell from the thumbnail above. It barely fit into the truck, and with a narrow palette, that also made it prone to tipping. Suffice it to say, you’ll want no fewer than three people to be able to help with the monitor portion, four if you can have it. I also imagine that if you have a dock on site then it’ll be fine, but I don’t think that most venues do.

As the video above shows, the process of unboxing and setting the game up was mostly straightforward, just getting that monitor portion off of the palette required some additional help to do safely. Unfortunately, someone had hit the back of the monitor box with something like a forklift, but fortunately that only damaged a metal connector piece that attaches the console to the monitor, and it didn’t pierce the LCD itself. Had the latter happened, then I’d probably be fighting with insurance and getting a new monitor piece which would really be a nightmare.

One nice thing about the setup is that all of the bolts were put into their pre-drilled holes. This makes it easier than sorting them out like you were putting something from IKEA together. The manual does have some setup instructions but it could use more details, although if you have technical know-how, then figuring things out isn’t that hard.

All-in-all, it took about three hours to set up, which included the clean-up of all of the boxes. Due to the size, you still need help from others, and I imagine if you have more than two people around, it can help get everything setup quickly.

One part of the install that I couldn’t include in the video, but has been resolved as of this writing, is that of electricity. Where this uses an air compressor, and with everything else in the game package that uses electricity, this machine needs 26A. I don’t know how most FECs have their panels setup these days, but for my location, everything is designed around 20A circuits (and for safety, you can only run so many games on a single 20A circuit). Now an interesting thing is that they built two power outlets onto the game itself, one for just the game, a separate for the compressor, but I still had to get that figured out.

I called a local electrician company, got a bid, and this morning they spent a few hours adapting one of my existing circuits to have a dedicated 20A circuit just for this game. That is another expense added onto the pile, but if you play the game without the compressor then with it, it’s a night and day difference. The puffing sounds of the shots draws attention to the game, especially when you get the rapid fire power-up. So, I think it’ll be worth it.

GIGA SHOT: The Game

To the game itself, it’s not unlike the other Shot games in that this is essentially a virtual shooting gallery. They did add a little more to it though, including a couple of levels that have you shooting zombies and dinosaurs (not on the same level, but separate).

They did make some changes to the software, in that now there are five levels, each with several missions to play through. These all appear to end in a boss battle, even the target practice ones. The levels with the zombies & dinosaurs play more like a typical light-gun game, showing characters pop-up on the screen with dialogue. The game is set to vend tickets by default, which I turned off since I’m one of the last hold-outs on not doing tickets. It also mentions “Gift,” which I presume means a capsule dispenser, but I’ll have to ask JET about that one. The manual doesn’t appear to mention anything about a gift/capsule dispenser, but I might have overlooked it.

Like the other Shot games, the game is over when you run out of bullets, instead of having a health bar. This did confuse one of my customers who thought that the game was broken; he played the zombie level and the zombies do hit you, so it’s easy to see why you’d assume that.

Previously I didn’t spend a lot of time playing the game, since I was at a trade show and was running around from game-to-game, booth-to-booth, but where I’ve had this for almost a week now, I can get a better feel for it. As such, I have mixed feelings on it. The cabinet is great, with a strong presentation that demands attention so that it doesn’t need a license to get people to put coins into it. On the other hand, the software is in need of a lot of polish. Graphically it’s nice, with great color and solid frame rate. It’s also fun to get the rapid fire to just drench the scene with shots. But there are various other issues that I think are holding it back.

The game has leaderboards that you only see after the game is over, and you can’t input initials, making them basically pointless. Aside from the game crashing a couple of times, the attract mode is almost non-existent (just footage of bottles being shot on a 15 second loop, no text, no leaderboards, no other scenes). There are a couple of typos I’ve observed in the text and the levels with the dialogue (monsters & dinosaurs) is a bit cringe. Sometimes the text that accompany the dialogue goes off of the screen. When the zombies or dinosaurs are the targets , they’ll just pop up into the scene, which feels a little weird. The main target practice level also jumps between missions a bit too fast.

There are other things, which I am documenting in detail and will send JET my suggestions for improvements, but any changes can require investments of time & money to implement; they also might not agree with some or any of them. So no promises, but I do think that there’s a lot of potential there to find a great game.

I believe that I’m the only arcade in the State that has this game at the moment, although I’ve heard that some Round1USA locations have been grabbing this one. I haven’t been the R1USA in Utah in a bit, so they might have one at this point, but even if they do, at least it’s something that the FEC down the hall doesn’t have.

Have you played this yet? What did you think about it if so?

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