REVIEW: Duck Hunt / Gyromite

Game: Duck Hunt / Gyromite
Original Launch: October 1985
Relaunch: October 2010
Ratings: Duck Hunt, 6 stars / Gyromite, 2 stars


Nintendo knows. They've always known. It's clear to me now that Nintendo understands and recognizes that video game entertainment is not necessarily confined to a button-based handheld input controller, and that it never has been. Consider the Wii: when it was announced, it was generally lambasted as a novelty. Nintendo had been a distant third behind the PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Xbox in the console war, and appeared to be making a major gaff by presenting a system that offered hardware specs that led many to deride it as little more than Gamecube 1.5, and not a true next-gen successor.

What was truly happening was this: Nintendo was going back to its roots. In October of 1985, Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System, A.K.A. the NES. Knowing that they were entering a market that had just experienced a video game crash, they realized that they had to offer something different. That difference came in the form of a light-gun and a robot, both of which offered new ways for the player to interact with their games. Little did we know at the time, but these were the seeds that would grow into the various interactivity options put forth by Nintendo, eventually leading them back to being the industry leader.

The fuck you laughing at?

The light gun was used by the launch title Duck Hunt. Duck Hunt features three game modes: 1 Duck, 2 Duck, and Clay Shooting. The accuracy of the gun depended upon your distance from your (tube-based) TV. I found that the accuracy overall was pretty good, making for a fun shooting-gallery style game. To enable cheat mode, you held the muzzle of the gun an inch from to the screen. Although simple and repetitive, I always had a good time playing Duck Hunt. I felt like quite the marksman, blasting those small clay pigeons out of the sky, followed by reducing the high-speed ducks found in the later levels to dead projectiles.

What Duck Hunt is iconic for, though, is the dog. American gamers weren't generally accustomed to straight-out mockery by a game because on poor performance, but that's exactly what Duck Hunt did. Miss a duck, and that fucking dog would poke his head up over the brush... and snicker at you. Infuriating! Numerous light-bursts were regularly expelled from the gun in an attempt to blast that laughing mutt.

Yea, I'm sure I won't lose any of the pieces.

If the Light Gun lightly foreshadowed the genius of the Wiimote, it can be said that R.O.B., the Robotic Operating Buddy, was the harbinger of the Virtual Boy. While intriguing in concept, R.O.B. never took off in popularity, hence the fact that only two titles were ever produced to work with it. What R.O.B. did, essentially, was push buttons on controller 2, making him a Buddy that Operated, who happened to be a Robot. Yeah. With the multitude of small plastic components, the unit rarely stayed Operational, as the average 12-year-old wasn't much for taking care of relatively complex apertures, unless they were Lego-based.

Gyromite was one of the two R.O.B.-compatible titles. You are a scientist, trapped within a complex, and you must collect the dynamite and vegetables before being eviscerated by the roaming bad things. I've never had the opportunity to use R.O.B. to play this game, but I did play with a friend. Gyromite transforms from "help from a robotic teammate" to "go ahead, trust me, fall backwards. I'll catch you." Two player Gyromite will show you the true nature of the person you once considered a friend. If they're feeling ambiguous, they'll play the role of R.O.B. and move pylons out of your way so that you can successfully reach the your goals. If they are feeling treacherous (which my friends apparently strive to be), the game becomes a scientist-crushing simulator. It'd be one thing if you could hop out of the way; the game would be mildly versus-like, with player one managing the wily doctor and player two running the death machinations. Unfortunately, it's a carrot of a different color. The moment you cross the threshold of a pylon, you can be instantly destroyed by a bloodthirsty Lucy van Pelt. Once player two reaches ambivalence, the game become a monotonous foray into walking along pathways, collecting stuff and avoiding brain-dead bad guys.

I trusted you, goddamnit ;_ ;

Neither game stands the test of time, not from a game-play point of view nor a technological one. Good luck finding a complete, working R.O.B. to play Gyromite as it was intended, let alone a CRT television to bounce light signals off of. But that’s not what these games are about. What these games represent is an early example of the level of creativity that Nintendo was capable of, and what consumers could come to expect in the following 25 years. Not content with a button-based controller input, Nintendo was willing to take the home video gaming experience into new, uncharted directions. I think the world lost sight of that prior to the Wii launch, but I'm glad that Nintendo hadn't. Redefining the video game experience is something at which Nintendo has become an artisan. It’s my hope that Nintendo Relaunch is able to put that significance into perspective.

Duck Hunt


Gyromite


Review in a Haiku
I want to believe
That light-guns have a future
And robots do not.