Starship Troopers homebrew OR hack of Operation Wolf

I'm starting new in the NES developing world, but I've had programming experience and understand how to find out more about assembly, etc.

For years, I've wanted to make a Starship Troopers light gun / d-pad game that plays like T2: Judgement day for arcade and SNES, or similarly (because both arcade cabinets featured recoil-shooting guns) Operation Wolf for NES. The approach allows for gameplay even without the zapper (though support would be great), and it would be a lot of shooting-gallery type fun.

I'm finally in a position to take on a major hobby project, and this seemed like a great place to start and introduce myself.

I've found a large array of amazing dev tools and resources, so once I have more of a straightforward idea of the level structure and gameplay I'm aiming for I'll work on getting myself up to speed and asking questions in the NOOB threads. For now, I'm thinking about adhering the the basic structure and gameplay of Operation Wolf. At fist, I was considering a full ROM hacking / retooling of O.W., but I'm first going to attempt using NESmaker along with an array of dev tools to build a from-scratch game.

I've played the arcade T2, and that was a good game.

Good luck. We need more zapper gun games.

I haven't played T2 but i'm eager to do my part. Good luck!

It's definitely a good choice starting out doing your own thing, rather than a romhack Good luck on this project!

People often tend to think hacking games is a good way to start out learning NES development - it isn't