The Story of Duck Hunt: The Original Backbone of the NES

Before Mario became world famous, Nintendo hedged their bets on a simple shooting game.

What if you could play an arcade type game but in your own house with an accessory that had never been seen in a video game console?

Duck Hunt was a video game released by Nintendo in 1985, which used the new Light Gun shooter called the NES Zapper.

The game involves having three shots to hit ducks that appear one or two at a time and fly at various speeds. Duck Hunt would become one of the best-selling video games of all time.

There were other shooter games, but Duck Hunt was hands down the best. It’s hard to tell what made it so successful, and playable, but it landed on the perfect formula and is synonymous with the early days of the NES.

There’s an interesting story behind Duck Hunt — and the concept of the Light Gun — that goes back almost 20 years before it even came out.

Let’s look back at Duck Hunt: The Original First-Person Shooter.

Setting the Stage for Duck Hunt

So Duck Hunt came out in 1969 by SEGA. Wait, I thought you said it came out in 1985? Well, the NES version did, but an early iteration of Duck Hunt existed in 1969 in arcade form.