Before you ask, I don’t know if you can shoot the dog
Some of the best Virtual Reality games are also the most simple, and it doesn’t get much simpler than NES launch title Duck Hunt. You have a gun, your dog flushes out ducks, you shoot them. It’s simple. To the point. Easy to understand.
It’s also over thirty years old, and VR programmers Distraction Lab thought it might need a little kick in the ass. Their version plays on the Oculus Touch setup, and it starts as a faithful recreation, similar to the fan-made version for the Vive we told you about last year. Things quickly escalate, with hordes of ducks flying in every direction and multiple jerkass dogs holding up your trophies. To deal with all the careening canards, you can even up the odds by picking up a pair of pistols or tossing a frag grenade at the whole mess.
Duck Hunt is sort of an oddity among Nintendo intellectual property. I’d heard that the company lost the IP because “Duck Hunt” is too generic to copyright, and there hadn’t been any Nintendo Duck Hunt games created since the original in 1984. For a few years there were website ads everywhere inviting you to take out some frustration on pixelated ducks. That all seems to have changed when the Duck Hunt dog became a character in the most recent versions of Super Smash Brothers.
The VR version whipped up by Distraction Lab looks like a lot of fun, though I didn’t see if you could shoot the dog. That’s an urban legend that has a bit of truth behind it. It was never possible in the home port, but you had the chance to dispense canine retribution in the arcade version, as seen below.
Duck Hunt VR [VR Scout via Facebook]
Thanks to Nick for the tip!
