I'd argue it's the one title that most defines 8-bit lightgun gaming.

Whether you're shooting pixelized ducks or clay pigeons,

it was incredibly approachable for pretty much anyone

to pick up and play, due to it's use of the NES Zapper.

[Springy trigger noise]

Just point, shoot, and learn to embrace your hate for virtual dogs.

But as much as I enjoyed playing it at my friend's house back in the day,

my family only owned a 486 PC at the time

and, of course, Nintendo was not interested in releasing games for DOS.

Not unless it involved rap music!

[Rap music]

Ahh, the ’90s were a magical time, guys.

Anyway! The point was I wanted to play some friggin' Duck Hunt on my computer,

even though it obviously didn't have a light gun.

So when I saw this, I practically begged to get it...

Duck Hunt for the PC!

This was a shareware game by Alligator Software

that I got in 1994 at the local book faire!

Sandwiched between hundreds of other bland-looking disks.

There was no box art or screenshots to go on, only the title and description,

so it was a real gamble picking up games this way.

But, dude, I was desperate!

So I rushed it home, installed it,

And here is what I got.

[Quack!]

[Obnoxious duck calling]

[Quacking and gun noises]

Ehh... it's not quite what I'd hoped for, to be honest.

I mean, you could shoot ducks on top of a 3D-looking background,

and that I liked.

And it had sound effects that ran through my PC speaker

with the right drivers, so that was a plus.

But compared to the bright, colorful Nintendo-gasm

that was Duck Hunt on the NES,

I was absolutely bummed this is what I'd picked up.

There's no ammo to worry about here, you just reload every 3 shots

and soot as many ducks as you can in each wave.

And once the identical waves of identical ducks run out,

or you missed too many of them, it's game over.

And the shooting itself felt more like a dice roll

than anything else.

It really seems that no matter how accurate you are,

half the time the shots just won't connect.

And even though you have a “Duck Call” option,

it's an extra thing to click on at the start of each wave

that does pretty much nothing.

But I didn't give up!

I scrounged around online bulletin boards

and AOL's game channel for anything Duck Hunt-related,

and I'd often run across games like this:

Once again, it is called Duck Hunt,

this time by ALO-Software in 1993.

And yeah, it's not great; you just press Space to shoot

and hope you hit the duck-arrow.

Mmm~ ASCII art.

Although it does get the taunting aspect of the game down pat.

Except, instead of a condescending dog,

you have belittling text.

Ohh...?

Ouch!

Okay—now you're just being a dick!

Finally, in 1995, there was a DOS Duck Hunt tribute

by Creators of Intense Art.

Although I, unfortunately, did not discover this until recently.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for back in the day!

It's quite an impressive recreation!

Doubly so once you realize this is made using ANSI characters.

There are not bitmap graphics here at all.

[Jingle]

All this to say that, yeah, once NES emulators came out

I was all aboard that hype train!

But to this day, I have a soft spot for duck-hunting games!

So when I ran across this in a Goodwill some time ago,

I had to grab it.

This is Duck Hunter Pro!

Originally released in 1998,

but rereleased in 2002 here by Ducks Unlimited.

And yes: that says “mousepad with free game”,

and not the other way around.

That does not exactly instill confidence in the product,

But hey—it's 2002 and the tech bubble is bursting,

so just shove everything we have into a bag and sell it.

“Are you ready? Ducks Unlimited & HeadGames have teamed up to bring you—”

Wait! Wha— Wait! HeadGames made this?!

And they refrained from attaching the “Extreme” label to it?

Huh!

I mean, it features 10 different birds and website hotlinks

and an easy to use Chevy truck interface.

Cool...

And I see the Amazon reviews are quite promising!

Or... Amazon review. From “A customer”.

Uh-huh.

There's also this customer image someone uploaded

of a guy posing and some dead grass with a bunch of fish.

Yeah, that sounds about right...

Let's get this thing open and see what you get

starting with the CD itself and it's very blatant message

saying precisely what bundle this goes with and nothing else!

And, of course, there's the real star of the show:

the Ducks Unlimited mousepad.

And I gotta say, it's a pretty decent mousepad!

And I feel inclined to use it with this game,

even though I already use a lovely mousepad from Ducky...

... which is purely a coincidence, I assure you.

Starting the game up, and... ughh, HeadGames!

I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board!

It then greets you with a photo of an IBM Thinkpad!

And it's here that you enter your name and start your season of hunting.

After this, you get the main menu, including those fancy website hotlinks!

The Chevy and Duck Unlimited websites are the only ones that still work,

although, as expected, old-school IE doesn't play well.

Hah! And that seems like the HeadGames website is up for sale!

Now that is tempting!

Like... really tempting!

So I actually got in touch with the current owner of the domain

and they wanted $15 000 for it!

Considering it's been down for 15 years, that's only a grand for each dead year!

Yeah, whatever. Exiting the laptop screen

brings you to the easy to use Chevy truck interface

and here you can choose where you want to hunt.

There's four locations, and each one of them

has a unique set of environments and conditions,

varying in skill level.

Exiting the truck brings you to a Chevy stock photo!

And clicking on the trunk let's you choose from 3 shotguns,

most of which absolutely suck.

Seriously! Who's heard of a pump-action 12 gauge

that only holds 2 to 3 rounds?!

Oh, well. You can still shoot stuff with them, so that's good!

And this is done by selecting a blind to shoot from

on this map.

[Sorta realistic nature and bird noises]

Ahh, nothing better than the great outdoors

indoors, on Windows 98.

And from here you just...

Wh—what?!

[Windows error chime—“Chords”]

Okay, that was weird...

Anyway, from here you discover the mouse is entirely too sensitive,

so slow it down in the options menu, and...

Ohh! It's even worse!

Turns out the “slow” and “fast” options are reversed,

so you need to set it to the fastest to make it the slowest.

Did I mention HeadGames made this?

Anyway, back to the hunt and— Ugh! Again?!

Apparently, every time you start up a hunting session

it thinks you've reinserted the CD which triggers the autorun.

so you have to disable that feature in Windows

unless you want the game trying to reinstall itself

every time you hunt!

Alright, anyway, I think we can finally play now

and, uhh...

I mean, it's okay.

You pretty much just sit there and wait for your dude to start an ASMR session.

[>>Here they come!]

Then some ducks will fly by somewhere on-screen

and if you can hit them, you send your dog to go and retrieve them.

[>>Atta-boy, Chevy!]

Wait. Did uhh... He just called his dog “Chevy”?

The dog is named after the sponsorship!

Imagine if YouTubers did that! Every other dog would be named

Audible or Squarespace.

But yeah, that's pretty much it for these easier hunting sessions.

Shoot stuff until you're done shooting stuff!

Then exit back to your truck and... Haha!

Welp! [laughing] I guess that's what happens to the ducks!

[Grilling noise]

Oh, and if you happen to break the rules somewhere,

you'll get written up. And in that case,

you've gassed up the grill for nothing!

Unless you were playing the arcade mode, where you just shoot

anything that moves with no penalty,

sans any tasty duck afterward.

Seeing as you still have to wait around quite a bit

for ducks to fly by, it's not exactly what I would call

“exciting arcade gameplay”, but it's a bit less restrictive, at least.

And finally, there are more difficult hunts

which require you to possess a bit more skill

and higher tolerance for irritating game mechanics.

On these maps, the ducks don't fly by.

They're just these teeny-tiny single-pixel birds on the horizon.

In order to lure them in, ya have to lure them in

using decoys and calls.

Calls are pretty straightforward— you just use the correct one at the correct time

and they'll come flying closer.

[Duck calling]

[Duck calling] [Duck calling]

[Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling]

[Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling]

[Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling]

[Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling]

[Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling] [Duck calling]

And if you think that sound gets super old, you'd be correct!

I now hate ducks.

The goal here is to get this meter at the bottom

to turn from red to yellow to green,

because, otherwise, they're too far off to shoot with your shotgun.

That's where decoys come into play

and man, does this suck.

For whatever reason, this screen is home to some legendary input lag.

Just look at this crap!

Not only that, but the system for making a successful set of decoys is...

Pfft. A mystery to me, man!

The help menu says you need to create a pocket

for a landing zone in accordance with the wind direction

and balance the number of female and male decoys.

That'd be fine, if this was not the pickiest and least informative system possible!

All you've got to go on is a vague meter

turning colors to let you know if your placement is good or bad,

and like... 99% of anything you do seems to be bad!

The thing is, you need to get this into the green if you want to stand a chance

and I was never able to do that in over an hour trying.

Yeah. Combined with the lag? Screw that.

I gave up and went back to the easier modes

so I could cook more ducks, because I'm hungry.

But even that's not very fun here, and neither is the whole game!

It's not as ridiculously terrible as other HeadGames products,

but it's just not very enjoyable and it's exacerbated by

all sorts of little problems,

like, for instance, the really low field of view.

Every other 2D duck-hunting game I've played has a static screen that you aim around,

but here, the mouse both aims and scrolls the screen.

It's just not finnicky, but it makes it harder than it needs to be

to spot the ducks before they fly past!

Oh, and look!

There's a bunch of maps where the camera is bobbing up and down constantly

because you're on a boat.

That won't make players sick, at all! [Puke noises]

And on that queasy note we have reached the end

of my quest for duck-hunting PC games,

at least for today.

I know there's better duck-hunting games out there these days, but I don't really care anymore!

I'm sticking with the NES game,

because at least a laughing dog is the most I have to worry about.