Duck Hunt retrospective: Nintendo's history, and violence | NES Works

The game that convinced Nintendo that, yeah, bringing the NES to America would be a good idea arrives at last: Duck Hunt, the iconic shooting game. It's simplistic and goofy by today's standards, but Duck Hunt didn't succeed despite those traits... it succeeded BECAUSE of them. An intuitive, whimsical, dynamic shooting game that remains a beloved classic even now-and for good reason!
Check out www.goodnintentions.com for more on the game.

[@SoukerWorldGaming]

You know it's a good Jeremy Parish video where there's 7 minutes of context before talking about the game in question. Well done:)

[@NatLee]

when a video begins with a clip from UHF, you know you're in for a good time

[@severeerror52]

Doesn't the fact that Duck Hunt has its origins in a 1976 game mean that it's the oldest series represented in Smash?

[@stevenqbosell]

You pretty much have the definitive episode on Duck Hunt. The series gets better every episode. Awesome shit man. Taking me back to 1986 all over again.

[@JeremyParish]

+Steve Bosell Thanks!

[@midget35]

+Jeremy Parish The usual outstanding quality from an incredibly gifted guy. The gaming scene is impossibly lucky to have your skills. 10 out of ten (as always).

[@BobMagana]

Jeremy Parish great video! I know it's a few years old, but the thumbnail says wild gunman in text next to the duck hunt box

[@RabbitEarsCh]

I deeply appreciate how each of these videos uses the title screen font of the relevant game to spell out "GOOD NINTENTIONS". The graphics design of current NES/Game Boy Works videos has evolved a lot, and is extremely slick and classy, but attention to detail like this speaks to how much heart this channel has had for years.

[@GamingDelight]

I couldn't help but notice that the thumbnail listed Wild Gunman under the NES Works logo instead of Duck Hunt.

[@ChrisGorski]

This is unquestionably one of the finest series on KZbin.

[@akeminakajima449]

Never ceases to amaze me how you drop so many facts I've never heard from any other KZbinrs and put so much effort into every video, just wanted to say all the extra work you must do is worth it!! Great work man

[@KuraIthys]

It never ceases to surprise me when I see how colourful the Famicom game cartridges are. You see this at times in later eras, and the NES had the golden Zelda cartridges (as did the n64), but coloured cartridges were few and far between. A Super Famicom cartridge is almost always nearly indistinguishable from a PAL cartridge, save for the japanese text on the labels, and is equally, almost always grey. Yet Famicom carts come in a bewildering variety of colours, which really emphasises the point that the uniformly grey cartridge design is largely a marketing thing, rather than being any kind of manufacturing thing. (except if you assume that it's logistically simpler to have a completely uniform stock of cartridge shells, with only the internals and labels being customised... - though this is undermined by the existence of coloured cartridges.) Truly, the famicom, and some of the Super Famicom packaging designs suggest, when it comes to visual design and concepts at least, I clearly grew up in the wrong part of the world. XD

[@polycube868]

Yet the next gen Super Famicom was on gray cartridges exclusively.

[@RetroPowerUp]

Aside from Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt was the game I probably related to most to the NES as a kid. I mean, who didn't like shooting the toy gun at the screen and getting mad at the dog when you missed the ducks?

[@willmistretta]

I can totally see 2020 cops taking a kid out over a orange Zapper. Turns out it's less about the color of the gun....

[@JeremyParish]

They do seem to be big fans of orange skin

[@ShadowEl]

The Putt-Putt reference in the next episode tease...maybe some day we'll get DOS Works?

[@JeremyParish]

100% never

[@2001mark]

That f'n dog. I loved the realization that it could be a 2 player experience, though admittedly a rough experience. Skeet shooting was my go to, fun & relaxing.

[@steviewhite450]

Best use of UHF footage in a video game retrospective thus far.

[@michaelsegal3558]

I once had 2 zapper guns one grey and one orange so I did some customizing and made two zapper guns that were half grey and half orange which both are still useable if you have an old tube tv that works with zapper gun games

[@Poever]

It's Game Boy World and this is...wait a minute, wrong series. Great work as always giving the simplest of games a deep historical context.

[@BrianKapellusch]

I truly believe that there's a UHF clip for any occasion.

[@khaldub]

i don't think i ever figured out scoring in Duck Hunt. i was just shooting (at) ducks and hoping i got the good audio

[@ztoxtube]

Stanley Spadowski spotting. Badass.

[@earthboundmisfit79]

If you plug an NES controller into the player 2 port, you can shift the ducks flight path quickly left and right with the d-pad while player 1 shoots (and often misses) wildly. Pissed off my brother sooo much. lol 😂

[@YadonTheCat]

One of the very few games my dad would play

[@mavrick45]

top tier quality content right here!

[@sonicmario64]

The episode just opened up with some clips from one of my favorite movies starting "Weird Al" Yankovic... Sa-weet! :D

[@larryinc64]

The thumbnail to this says 'Wild Gunman' instead of Duck Hunt, might want to fix that lol.

[@erika_fuzzbottom]

Wow, there was a lot of research done for this video. I wouldn't have thought so much could be said about a game as simple as Duck Hunt.

[@THEmuteKi]

Such a shame that the bonus level didn't show up in the NES version at all. Having all the ducks fly out at once was overwhelming to me as a child of probably somewhere around 3 or 4 or whatever when I played it in a Chuck E Cheese. Good times. Should probably pick it up on WiiU VC.

[@massivepileup]

+the_muteKi May have been a technical problem, the NES tracks whether you hit something by showing a white square for one frame on each potential target (and the gun reporting when it saw white), the more targets there are the more frames are needed to check all the targets and that would get very weird.

[@THEmuteKi]

+massivepileup I think that's reasonably likely. I believe the VS system was actually a bit more powerful than a stock NES. (Still pretty fun... wish they'd release that version on VC somehow)

[@TheTacticalRPGOdyssey]

Have you ever tried capturing footage from the Super Scope? I never hear anything about the Super Scope.

[@michaelsegal3558]

I have this multi-cart that has 4 nin uchi mahjong on it and for some reason some sound effects from other games on the multi-cart change the way the title song and sound effects sound it’s really cool

[@jamesmoss3424]

I play duck hunt a lot when I was a kid and it's still very good. 😀👍🎮

[@michaelsegal3558]

The most common way to get Duck Hunt was on the Super Mario Bros. 1 / Duck Hunt cartridge even though both games were available on their own separate cartridges as well

[@Arcadiality]

Great video Jez...sorry couldn't resist.

[@ErichWK]

What a great introduction. My God

[@augustusvonwatts555]

Thank you for your videos.

[@lawrencekrysak]

I was fortunate enough to have access to both an NES and a Master System as a kid and, while I know it's heretical to say, I always found the Light Phaser games more engrossing than their Zapper counterparts. And, for as much as I have a fondness for 'Duck Hunt', it's 'Gangster Town' that still manages to captivate me to this very day.

[@michaelsegal3558]

So there was an arcade version of Duck Hunt where you could shoot the dog?

[@susanfit47]

We have been waiting since the late 80's and 90's to shoot that dog from Duck Hunt, from laughing at the player if they failed to shoot any of the ducks that appeared during the round. While believed to be an urban legend, the arcade version of Duck Hunt, titled Vs. Duck Hunt, includes a more difficult mode, where the dog will jump to get the ducks, getting in the way of the players. If players shoot the dog, his face will be damaged, while also wearing a cast and using crutches. He will then say "Ouch! Shoot the ducks, not me!".

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

I am, and always will be a HUGE Transformers fan, so I'm glad you mentioned the Megatron controversies. Did you know that the hyper-G1 Cartoon-Accurate Masterpiece Line Megatron can't be sold in America? It's completely illegal, even with the orange cap!

[@Jayce_Alexander]

I imported mine from Japan, and was amazed to see it pass customs without a hitch. 😅

[@ronaldodemetriusescondido3626]

This video gets to drink from.... THE FIRE HOSE!!!!!!

[@antant9523]

i think we will have to wait for a very long long time before you even touch on the power glove

[@JodyBruchon]

The thumbnail says Wild Gunman, not Duck Hunt.

[@StrobeFlashLite]

Hey, how did you play Duck Hunt with an Analogue NT? Zappers can't be used on HDTVs!

[@JeremyParish]

+StrobeFlashLite I didn't get the HDMI mod. I have RGB cables running into a CRT, then passing through into an upscaler, and from there into an HDTV and video capture device. It's a pain in the butt, but the results are good.

[@gabrieleriva651]

Jeremy, which kind pf Nes are you capturing the videos with? Analogue NT?

[@JeremyParish]

+Gabriele Riva Yes... check out the Hogan's Alley episode, which goes into a little detail on the capture setup I'm using.

[@shtdaprdtr]

Great video but you didn't talk much about the clay shooter game included in duck hunt

[@rubberwoody]

"american in general are very interested in gun"

[@NORMALLYRETRO]

Lol--any youngin can Google Entertech and see why there was such an issue with toy guns in the 80s.

[@kamiboy]

Too bad the Japanese bubble economy bursting in the 90's put an end to the Japanese dominance. After the collapse all that great stuff from Japan slowly lost its edge until it went all but blunt.

[@toneranimation]

You might be a little colour blind, those brown ducks are clearly red. ;) Great video btw!