
How Did the Duck Hunt Gun Work? - digitalmud
http://mentalfloss.com/article/26875/how-did-duck-hunt-gun-work
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Peroni
Little known fact: Duck hunt is a 2 player game.

 _Control pad - Used with Game A for second player to control duck's flight
pattern._

Source: <http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/manuals/duckhunt.txt>

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runevault
...I thought everyone knew that. I certainly did that to mess with my
friends/siblings as a kid.

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Peroni
I spent countless hours on that game as a kid and only found out about the 2
player option last year!

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unwind
That actually was better than I thought ... I had to double-check on Wikipedia
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_gun#Sequential_targets>) but I didn't
know about the sequential-targets approach.

I guess that's because my first exposure to light gun tech was with Commodore
hardware, that had already taken the leap to cathode ray timing. Nice to know.

The decline of lightgun tech with the introduction of flat-screen TV:s is
something that sometimes makes me sad. The replacement "passive/dead-
reckoning" techniques just don't feel as satisfying, or elegant.

On the other hand, keeping a tube TV around just to play Time Crisis is hard
to motivate, too. :)

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pflats
I always thought that Namco's GunCon controllers were the most interesting;
rather than passively figure out the cathode ray timing, they tapped the video
signal to actively read it. They're still the most accurate "light gun"
controllers I've used.

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Camillo
"Figuring out" seems more active than "reading" to me. But of course being
active is better than being passive in our culture, so the newer and better
tech will always be labeled "active" no matter what it actually does.

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joezydeco
Sadly, the Duck Hunt gun doesn't work on some newer LCD/Plasma TV sets.

Some of the newer sets with fancier CPUs are doing all kinds of video
processing work on the signal before clocking out the LCD pixels. The delay
can sometimes be a couple of frames. While that's not enough to be noticeable
or annoying when watching standard TV, it seems to be enough that the NES
stops looking for the white video before it can be shown on-screen.

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shardling
That's why rhythm games like Rock Band have an option to synch with the
particular display you're using.

Guess the makers of Duck Hunt could hardly have anticipated the need. :)

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delinka
The old analog vs. digital rivalry...

I was a teenager in the 80s when it dawned on me that, during a live
broadcast, the electron beam in the CRT was literally being driven, in
realtime and over radio, by the camera at the broadcast site. Of course, any
respectable broadcaster also had tons of video processing equipment to sync
those non-synchronized camera signals ... and to delay the actual transmission
for whatever reason (censoring, etc.)

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delinka
"...you don't notice the blackout..."

Maybe _you_ don't, but I did. The screen flashed and you'd see the squares on-
screen for that split second. I certainly wasn't fast enough to see the
sequence of the squares, but I'd see them appear.

I'd be interested in more technical depth on this exact hardware.
Specifically, was each square on-screen for a whole frame or did they draw one
square per interleaved field?

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sixothree
Unfortunately, this article was weak on pretty much any technical details.

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KMag
Was my television particularly slow? I noticed the blackened screen and white
rectangles around the ducks as a kid, but the article says "you don't notice"
the blackout and the white rectangles. Surely many of you noticed this as
kids.

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kronholm
If I remember correctly, I saw it too. But it was kind of camouflaged to look
like the effect of shooting the gun.

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Ntrails
Yes, I seem to recall that there was a 'flash' effect when shooting but it
never occurred to me it might be to do with the gun working - just thought it
was intended for effect.

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0x0
This is a testament to great design and engineering, turning around an
otherwise ugly technical requirement to kind of a neat effect in itself :)

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peeters
This is why I always thought my friends were stupid for sitting up really
close to the T.V., whereas I could always beat them by going as far back as
the wires would allow. I was widening the field of view, requiring me to be
less accurate than at normal range.

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danielweber
You could be pointing at any flashing light source and get pretty good
results. For example, an Apple II monitor showing TEXT: HOME: FLASH: FOR A = 1
TO 24 * 40: PRINT " ";: NEXT

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dsl
Later games that supported the gun would either have multiple targets and
check to see if you hit all of them in a single refresh cycle, or test between
refresh cycles to see if you "hit" a non-existent target.

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jlouis
The cool thing is that the shot is in the wrong direction. It is the
television that shoots a ray into the gun. Of course, there are no other way
to do this, but it is fun to think about.

Raytracing is the same. The ray is cast in the "wrong" direction in order to
figure out from where it came.

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Retric
Technically ray tracing refers to both eye-based versus light-based ray
tracing. Eye based is most often used because it tends to be faster excluding
some minor effects like caustics that are easier to generate from the light
source. Though complex scenes may benefit from bidirectional path tracing,
which is a combination of both.

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dbbolton
>the sci-fi ray gun-inspired Zapper

Actually, the design of the Zapper was heavily influenced by the High Standard
.22 LR target pistol: <http://i.imgur.com/1i9hyvx.jpg>

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saddino
_Light guns hit home video game consoles with Shooting Gallery on the Magnavox
Odyssey in 1972. Because the included shotgun-style light gun was only usable
on a Magnavox television, the game flopped. The Nintendo Entertainment System
(NES) Zapper then fell into the hands of American kids in October 1985..._

A light gun that worked with all TVs was also included with the Telstar Ranger
console (a pong game console developed by Coleco and distributed by Sears) in
1977. The gun was used with the skeet games supported by the console and
worked pretty well at a distance from about 4 ft (although tracking a large
bouncing white block on a black screen was probably not that technically
challenging).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar_%28game_console%29>

Incidentally, my brother and I had our Telstar Ranger gun (black plastic, very
gun looking) confiscated by airport security when we, perhaps unwisely, tried
to carry the console, paddles and gun in our carry-on.

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Sarkie
Here's a video of duck hunt paused a second before a shot.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1NyIsZXeqU&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1NyIsZXeqU&feature=player_detailpage#t=30s)

If you click play and then pause and then hold down space it'll slow-mo the
video and you'll see the white block on the black background that the article
is talking about.

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dobbsbob
my first 'hack' when I was 8yrs old: put a mirror in front of the game and
shoot at it. total duck holocaust

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acgourley
Here's an image of the internals of the Zapper:
[http://www.todayifoundout.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/12/NES...](http://www.todayifoundout.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/12/NES-Zapper.jpg)

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phunge
Is that a big copper counterweight in the handle? That'd never fly nowadays,
copper's too expensive :)

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gt5050
Here is a video of Duck Hunt running on a cathode-ray oscilloscope
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhvT2GMOMB8>

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nisse72
Back in the early 80's I became the owner of an IBM light pen, IIRC salvaged
from a 3270 terminal. By replacing the connector, I managed to get it to work
with the CGA card in my IBM PC, which had a light pen connector and a couple
of supporting registers.

When the pen was clicked against the screen, it notified the card when it saw
the scanline, in a manner quite similar to the duck hunt gun described here.
The position of the pen click could then be read from a register on the card.

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sev
Anyone remember the orange one? I heard they changed it to orange after
getting sued due to the grey one looking too "real" - any truth to that
legend?

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jlgreco
I am not sure if it was the case at the time, but I believe there are
currently federal regulations that mandate that airsoft guns have to have a
bright orange tip.

That is what this wikipedia article indicates anyway, though the section is
rather poor: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_weapon#Toy_weapon_laws>

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quad_copter_cat
It wasn't just Nintendo guns. I remember that all toy guns switched to
ridiculous colors some time around 1988. If I recall correctly, it was a new
safety law; the police didn't want to accidentally shoot some kid playing with
a toy gun.

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redhatter
I thought this game was quite easy to figure out.

I used to build a circuit board version using light sensitive diod and a flash
light source.

I didnt make the laughing dog. :P

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aidenn0
I'm pretty sure at least one game used the horizontal refresh timing to
distinguish targets rather than sequential targets; I think it was called
"Gotcha!"

I don't know for sure that it used the H refresh, but it would often get
targets that were horizontally aligned mixed up (i.e. you hit a different
target than you were aiming at), which seems like pretty strong evidence for
it.

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bch
Reminds me of when I was watching William Gibson (Vancouver, early 90s(?))
recite a piece talking about "the glow of light pens [on some device]"...
being of a generation that grew up w/ a Commodore 64, my understanding was
that light pens _read_ light (and raster position), they don't emit light. I
let Mr. Gibson go on in peace, though...

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bitdiffusion
For those that want the modern equivalent to relive your old time crisis, HOD,
op-wolf days, (e.g. for mame cabinets), apparently the ones that use a
dedicated infrared sensor (like the wii) are the most accurate (e.g.
www.arcadeguns.com).

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unimpressive
I actually learned about this when I was trying to interface with a Cabellas
Big Hunt orange shotgun I bought at the thrift store.

Sadly, this is not how the gun worked. It was the kind that works by measuring
IR sensors.

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scrame
Surprised they didn't mention the original Duck Hunt nintendo game from 1976:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaUmcG3iors>

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aaronsnoswell
I have wondered about this ever since I played Duck Hunt in the 90s! Feels
great to finally have an answer!

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Uchikoma
Best light gun game: Virtua Cop (Saturn)

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Macsenour
I am completely biased, but I like Ready, Aim, Tomatoes! for the SEGA Menacer.

