Was the Duck Hunt game for NES a mistake?

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Was the Duck Hunt game for NES with the gun a big mistake? Did it lead to more people getting shot? I don't think so.

I thought everybody played Duck Hunt back when it came out.

It was a very popular game but for I think for some reason it was the only game for NES that used the gun. Lots of people including me got shot with that gun when playing NES & none of us were hurt in any way by that gun unless the gun caused radiation or something.

Hell no. The dog was what made it funny.

@nick007: Wild Gunman and Hogan's Alley were available with the Zapper. Maybe some others.

I didn't know about those games but I didn't have an NES; I played my neighbor's one some thou. & that dog was funny. Here's a song about it

My brother played Duck Hunt and Hogan's alley when the NES first came out and we never shot any real people or animals with the light gun. Because it wasn't, ya know, a REAL gun. Except for our dad's hunting rifles we didn't have guns. I think my brother sort of got into hunting like our dad for a while but not me.

Besides playing NES me & my neighbor shot toy guns at each other a bit; like water guns, NERF guns, laser guns that make laser sounds, & cap guns that made loud bangs/pows. I also played more than a few vid games for other systems than NES that involved shooting guns like 1st person shooters. I'm from the deep south witch is well known for loving guns. But the only real guns I ever shot in my life were BB & pellet guns & it was almost exclusively target shooting like cans & buckets. I also support most all gun control/violence legislation that is ever passed, voted on, gets put in various bills ect.

No, it was a classic.

You might be thinking of the Power Glove, Virtual Boy, most of their recent marketing strategies, Wii U, Shaq Fu, Game Cube, Superman 64, Ninjabread Man, etc. Nintendo has made plenty of mistakes, but Duck Hunt isn't one of them.

If you want a genuinely bad game, there's always Custer's Revenge.

Or Night Trap!

Somehow I doubt shooting digital waterfowl with a plastic toy gun leads to shooting real birds with real handguns, even less so to shooting people.

Especially when shooting migratory birds is illegal by Federal law unless done with a proper migratory bird permit, a repeating shotgun plugged to hold three shells or less, (or a single- or double-barreled gun,) and, if hunting ducks or geese, nontoxic steel or bismuth shot.

Anyone who shoots birds with a handgun is cruel, unsportsmanlike, and a lawbreaker.

Quite right.




Very much so, but also a damned good marksman. The obvious breach of ethics and good sportsmanship aside, shooting a duck out of mid-air would be one hell of a shot, given that ducks are among the fastest birds when it comes to horizontal flight.

Most NES consoles came with the Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt cartridge (for consoles with the Power Pad, the cartridge also had World Class Track Meet)

You're quite right indeed on that one! Anyone who could do that with a handgun would be a master shooter. Even with a rifle there would still be great difficulty.

Thankfully I'll never have to try shooting ducks; my gun is too old to handle steel shot cartridges and the chambers are too short for standard ammunition. So I won't have to try to shoot a duck while the ducks are, apparently, challenging the air speed record.

My brother and I also had R.O.B. the robot, but there were only two games ever made that you could play with it.

Nintendo hasn't been very good with its accessories and accessory-based games. But they seem to have nostalgia for R.O.B. and see it as an icon of their early days and successfully bringing the 80's video game crash to an end.

Now, raptors like the Peregrine Falcon and the Golden Eagle obviously reach greater speeds, but only when diving.