Maybe it’s the nostalgic value, maybe it’s the utter simplicity, but I’ve always been a big fan of the on-rails shooter video game genre. Having grown up playing titles like Virtua Cop and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, I’ve always wanted to take that arcade shooting experience home with me so that I could enjoy it while sitting on the living room couch, sipping on a Coca-Cola and munching on some potato chips. Yeah, Lethal Enforcers for the Super Nintendo and Time Crisis for the PSone were okay, but they just weren’t the same as the real arcade experience.

Well, I’ll soon have another chance to experience the on-rail shooter at home, this time using a whole new set of technology in place of the standard light gun peripheral. I’m talking, of course, of the Nintendo Wii.

Granted, I’ve never really gotten into the Resident Evil series by Capcom and although it’s getting less than favorable previews, I’m somehow interested in Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. It departs from the standard RE fare in that 1) you don’t actually control where your player goes and 2) it’s first-person, not third. You use the Wii Remote as your gun, pointing it as the approaching zombies and blasting them half way to hell. Reloading is done by shaking the remote.

As you can see from the screenshot above, RE:UC is going to look and feel a lot like the House of Dead on-rail shooter series. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t leave much room for innovation. More recent news has it that…

Capcom’s own Kawada Masachika is heading production, working to extend the game’s length — approximately 15 hours — beyond the short playtimes that plagued Gun Survivor releases. Umbrella Chronicles also promises a lot more gameplay depth with destructible environments, improved weapon selection, and quick time events.

I don’t know about you, but that still sounds pretty standard. Oh well. Blasting zombies never gets old.