Duck Hunt
Duck Hunt is a 1984 light gun shooter video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) video game console and the Nintendo VS. System arcade hardware. The game was first released in April 1984, in Japan for the Family Computer (Famicom) console and in North America as an arcade game. It became a launch game for the NES in North America in October 1985, and was re-released in Europe two years later.
| Duck Hunt | |
|---|---|
North American box art | |
| Developer(s) | Nintendo R&D1 Intelligent Systems |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Director(s) | Shigeru Miyamoto |
| Producer(s) | Gunpei Yokoi |
| Designer(s) | Shigeru Miyamoto Hiroji Kiyotake |
| Programmer(s) | Kenji Nakajima |
| Artist(s) | Hiroji Kiyotake |
| Composer(s) | Hirokazu Tanaka |
| Platform(s) | Nintendo Entertainment System, Arcade |
| Release | NES Arcade (VS. Duck Hunt) |
| Genre(s) | Light gun shooter, sports, shooting gallery |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
| Arcade system | Nintendo VS. System, PlayChoice-10 |
Players fire the NES Zapper at a CRT television, with three attempts per round to shoot ducks and clay pigeons.
The game initially received a positive reception in the mid-1980s, but was later given mild praise in retrospective reviews. The game was inspired by Nintendo's previous Duck Hunt electro-mechanical arcade game which was based on the Laser Clay Shooting System released in 1976. Upon release as a video game, Duck Hunt became a major commercial success both for arcades and consoles in the 1980s, helping to popularize light gun video games with over 28 million copies sold worldwide.
In 1986, the nationwide launch of the NES included the Deluxe Set bundle with pack-in games Duck Hunt and Gyromite. The later Action Set has Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. on one cartridge. The final Duck Hunt bundle is the Power Set, with a multi-cart with World Class Track Meet, Super Mario Bros., and Duck Hunt. The game was released on Virtual Console for the Wii U in 2014.