On the Hunt

Nintendo's electronic toys really show off Gunpei Yokoi's tenacity and original thinking. Yokoi is the brain behind Nintendo's optoelectronic gun, the Ultra Hand, and the Game & Watch. I credit him with tenacity and original thinking because it seems that time and again some post war restriction or other forced Nintendo to add a twist to their product. Like with the Chiritorie, a robotic vacuum that could only go straight - but spun around indefinitely to go in any direction, if Yokoi was limited to using just one frequency, that's what he went with and it was ingeniously used.

Now, of course the optoelectronic guns are an important precursor of what Nintendo would create later on (some 12 years later!), but what I'm calling the original Duck Hunt was actually first a target set for the gun.

Nintendo's optoelectronic guns sold with a small number of different targets, many of which could also be bought separately. Duck Hunt was one of these target games, but it was the most advanced form of the toy. Rather than shooting at a plastic figure or object, Duck Hunt had players use a projector to produce the image of a flying duck on a wall. Since the gun reacts to light sources, it could be fired up to 4 meters away from the target.

Everything else might have helped Nintendo to get a grasp of what game consumers wanted well before they got into the video game biz, but Duck Hunt is definitely a true difference maker.