Older video game players likely have memories of the classic Nintendo Entertainment System title Duck Hunt, which was bundled with Super Mario Bros. in many of the console’s retail packages. It could be an incredibly frustrating game, but actor Seth Rogen just revealed a trick that has us wondering how we didn’t already know it.
Rogen posted on Twitter his tip for the game — if you have a second controller plugged into the system while the first player is using the NES Zapper, the second controller can control the duck itself.
Hot tip that’s 25 years late but I didn’t have Twitter back then: in Duck Hunt on Nintendo, the second player controller controlled the duck.
— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) September 17, 2018
No more struggling to line up the perfect shot. No more rage-induced game sessions as the dog mocks you in laughter for failing to make contact. You can finally blast that duck into smithereens and call yourself a master marksman.
The “secret” isn’t actually an unknown, as there are YouTube videos demonstrating it — one of them was published exactly one decade before Rogen’s post, though that was probably just a coincidence and in no way evidence of a classic video game tips conspiracy theory.
Still, several other Twitter users were amazed by the information, including fellow comedian Ron Funches, who is himself a big video game fan.
What?!
— Ronald Funches (@RonFunches) September 17, 2018
Rogen pointed out to those in disbelief that the instruction booklet for the game actually mentions the ability to do this, but many kids back in the ’80s simply tossed the booklet aside in order to immediately play the game. Today, we wouldn’t have this option, as most games no longer come with a booklet at all. In the case of Switch games, the only thing included in the tall game case is a game card about the size of your thumbnail.
Duck Hunt and the NES Zapper made use of technology that is incompatible with most modern television sets. Whenever the trigger on the Zapper was pulled, the screen would go black for a single frame with only the duck’s position being illuminated by a white square. If the Zapper detected this square — hence the term “light gun” — the game would register a hit. It isn’t on par with the motion technology we have today, but it got the job done.
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