Duck Hunt

Duck Hunt is a popular video game released for the game console system of the Nintendo Famicom/ Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The Japanese multinational corporation Nintendo Co., Ltd developed and published this game. Duck Hunt was first launched in the year 1984 in Japan. In the same year, the game was also released in the arcade game arena as Vs. Duck Hunt. It has been included in the arcade console of PlayChoice-10. In this game, the player uses the NES Zapper for shooting ducks on the screen and wins points. One or two ducks appear on screen at a time. The player has a maximum of three shots for shooting the ducks down.

Initially, the game received mediocre reviews from critics. But players gave a positive reaction to the game. Before the NES version of the game, Nintendo had also released a Duck Hunt which was based on a Laser Clay Shooting System. This earlier version was launched in 1976. It later became a pack-in game. First, it was in a dual game pak along with the Super Mario Bros and later these two games made up a triple game pak with the addition of World Class Track Meet.

How to Play Duck Hunt

In this game, the player has to try and shoot down clay pigeons or ducks in mid-flight, using the Nintendo Zapper Light Gun.

There are three modes of this game:

One Duck: In this mode, the player has to shoot 10 ducks in each round. The player has only three chances for shooting down the ducks that appear on the screen one by one.

Two Ducks: The “Two Ducks” mode is similar to the earlier one with one principal difference. In this mode, two ducks appear together on the screen instead of one. The player has to shoot them down using the three shots allotted for each duck. A new pair does not appear on screen unless both ducks from the previous pair has either been shot down or escaped.

Clay Shooting: In the “Clay Shooting” mode, the player has to shoot down 10 clay pigeons in each round. Two clay pigeons have to be shot at once from a distance.

The “Two Ducks” mode is the first round and the “Clay Shooting” mode is the second round in the Vs Duck Hunt game. The “One Duck” mode was never featured in the arcade version.

In the “One Duck” and “Two Ducks” modes, there is a dog that retrieves the shot down ducks. In the Vs Duck Hunt, the dog tries to distract the players by jumping out of the bushes during the bonus rounds. The round ends if the player mistakenly shoots the dog.

There are many unofficial versions of this game in which the player is allowed to shoot the dog. This dog appears as a cameo in another NES game called Barker Bill's Trick Shooting where it can be shot.

There is no traditional multiplayer mode in Duck Hunt. But according to the manual, a second player can control the duck on the screen using a NES controller. But only the “One Duck” mode allows a second player to join the game.