Duck Hunt (NES)

When the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in the United States, it did all it could to wow consumers. While future systems would launch with more impressive hardware and stronger launch games, the NES came in swinging with perhaps the most unique launch ever. Players could buy console bundles containing the unusual R.O.B. the robot toy peripheral and games that interact with it, a copy of what would become one of the most important video games of all time in the form of Super Mario Bros., or a light gun peripheral called the NES Zapper to let you shoot at targets on your own T.V. screen. The flagship title for the NES Zapper was a humble game simply titled Duck Hunt, and due to being part of launch bundles as well as later being printed on the same cartridge as the original Super Mario Bros., it is possible that Duck Hunt is the most played shooting game of all time and definitely the most played and purchased light gun game in history.

Despite such lofty accolades, Duck Hunt is incredibly basic. There are three modes of play, all of them focused on giving you very simple, straightforward targets to shoot at with the NES Zapper, and while each mode has some unique traits, there are some consistent factors across all of them. Mainly, that the game is divided into rounds, each one giving you ten targets that require a single shot to take down to earn points. What these targets are and how they are presented are different across the modes, but to progress to the next round, there is a bar on the bottom of the screen below the hit/miss counter that will show you how many you need to successfully shoot to progress, play ending once you’ve ended a round without hitting the required amount of targets.

Game A and Game B both include the duck hunting angle that the game’s title promises. A dog leaps into the grass to scare the ducks out, the background always the same area of grass with a tree and a bush that ducks might sometimes end up behind in their flight patterns. The ducks do politely rise out in set amounts based on the mode you picked, Game A sending out one duck at a time and Game B having two ducks rise out of the grass to be shot down. Whenever a duck pops out of the grass, you have a small window to shoot them, the player given three shots for each subsection of the round. If you shoot a duck, you get a few points, a somewhat silly expression of shock on the duck’s face before it drops, and the dog rising up to show you the duck you shot. What this means in the long run though is that these rounds can take quite a bit of time to complete, since in Game A that means you have a repeating sequence of 10 cases where you’re waiting on one duck to appear, shooting it, and waiting for the dog to get it and show it off. Game B is a bit more tolerable as two ducks popping out means there are only 5 subsections to a round, allowing you to progress much more quickly to the more difficult rounds instead of languishing in the fairly easy early ones.

If you use up all your shots or take too long to fire, the duck or ducks will fly away, counting as a miss and the dog will rise up from the grass and snicker at your failure. This snide dog has a bit of a reputation among players of Duck Hunt for being annoying, many wishing they can shoot the pooch, but I think some of that comes more from the basic level structure. The ducks and dog are cartoonish and add a bit of color to the game, but when you sit through the slow round structure and have to wait for the dog to rise up, laugh, and then get back to one duck rising out and potentially seeing the animation again, I can see how it wore down some players’ nerves. If you complete a round with too many misses based on how well the game expected you to do, it’s a simple Game Over, but by having both scores and round counters, you can try and see how well you do with either on repeat playthroughs.

Game A definitely takes quite a while to get going, the first 10 or so rounds fairly slow due to the round structure and ducks that leisurely flap around the screen. It’s definitely the mode meant to ease in players and give younger gamers something on their level, but it does pick up its pace as you get beyond those and the downtime decreases as you have less time in general to shoot down the single ducks. Game B is definitely an improvement difficulty wise, ramping up in speed faster and having the ducks move more erratically, requiring the player to shoot more intelligently and track an extra target. Three shots to hit a single duck means in Game A you can afford to miss, but in Game B you only have one spare shot and two targets. Essentially, Game A and Game B are like difficulty options, and you’ll likely prefer Game A if you want to see how far you can get in the rounds and Game B if you want to see how good your aim is.

Game C is an odd outlier, partly because there are no ducks to hunt! Instead, Game C is about shooting clay pigeons, and while there are no cartoon ducks or a dog to make it visually interesting, it does take place in a new area with some mountains in the background. Clay pigeons are hurled out in sets of two, the game doing a decent job of shrinking the sprites based on how far away from you they are. If they get too far away without being shot down they’ll disappear and count as a miss, and the mechanics for making progress and points are identical to those found in the other two modes. The absence of the dog also means this is the fastest mode to play, with the next two clay pigeons popping out shortly after you’ve either hit or missed the previous ones. Over time the pigeons fly faster, but their arcs are predictable so you can still figure out where and when to fire well enough.

Duck Hunt gives you a few different modes to try and add a little variety to the experience, but despite this, you’ll get the gist of each mode by the time the first round is over. From there, it’s a matter of whether or not you’re willing to commit the time to keep playing, with only a difficulty that moves in jerks rather than rises smoothly to motivate you. For a low commitment title to pop in and play quick, there is the fault that you have to work up through the easier rounds, but the shooting does its job and it’s not complicated by anything extraneous. You have a simple goal and for some people, that will be enough. Checkers isn’t complex but people seem to enjoy that, same for Tic-Tac-Toe and Rock-Paper-Scissors. Duck Hunt is the game that would be built into the Zapper if the technology had been up to snuff to make that happen, and as such, it’s meant to ensure the gun has something interesting enough to do on its own before you get other Zapper compatible games.

THE VERDICT: Duck Hunt is a pretty clear case of a game serving a purpose. Nintendo wanted to impress with the NES Zapper controller, so they packed in a simple duck hunting game to give you something to do with the gun. It’s got some cartoony animals to give it a touch of personality, but it’s still all about the basic task of shooting down ducks or clay pigeons. The difficulty is a bit sloppy and because of that you have to push through slow rounds to find a sweet spot where the challenge comes together perfectly. The mode split makes it a little easier to ensure you have some challenge from the start, but it’s still target shooting no matter how it’s presented. It works properly and does its job, meaning it can’t dream of attaining greatness, but it’s pretty happy presenting something simple and accessible.

And so, I give Duck Hunt for the Nintendo Entertainment System…

An OKAY rating. Duck Hunt is bland, but so is a sandwich with just cheese in the middle. You eat it because it gets rid of your hunger and it’s not too bad, and sometimes, all you want is that simple meal rather than putting in the effort to cook something extravagant or risking a bad taste in your mouth with something unusual. Duck Hunt is the hardware demo game for the NES Zapper and it shows off how it works with a game that isn’t designed for long-term engagement. You put it in, shoots some ducks and clay pigeons, and you had a decent amount of light gun fun and can shelf it until you get that simple urge again. Of course it would have benefited from variety, more content, adjustments to game speed, and many other things that would make it clearly better, but going back to the earlier comparisons, Checkers and Tic-Tac-Toe could definitely be improved in the same way, but that simplicity is meant to keep it accessible for those looking for something that isn’t a huge engagement.

It would be hard to say Duck Hunt deserved to be the most played shooter of all time. It rode on the coattails of a game system that made a huge splash and bundles that contained more appealing products, but I can at least say it’s not the worst candidate for such a spot. Like Pong, it’s more like a toy you play on your T.V. rather than something that taps into the incredible realm of possibility found in the video game medium.