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The Oldest Known 'Duck Hunt'

kotaku.com — It was called the Seeburg Ray-O-Lite and dates back to 1936. This game featured a flying duck with a light sensing tube that would drop the duck when you shot it with the rifle, which produced a beam of light when the trigger was pulled. Yup, sounds like "Duck Hunt".

Who dugg this? Made popular Jan 5, 2007

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  • Zzyw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+31It's no duck hunt without the annoying dog...
  • AwesomeMonster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Look what else came up when I googled the company.
    1942 Seeburg/Mike Munves Kill The Jap/Trap the Jap
    http://www.marvin3m.com/arcade/killer.htm
    I love WWII propaganda.
  • sancho320, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8From the comments below the story:

    BiscuityGoodness says:
    Apparently in 1936 dogs still had enough common courtesy to refrain from fiendishly giggling at the ineptitude of their masters.
    Those were the days.
  • shankrabbit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7From the looks of it the Japanese in America back in the 40s had HUGE mouths!
    http://www.pinrepair.com/arcade/trapjap2.jpg
  • TheTaoOfBill, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I live 15 minutes from marvin's. The guy who owns it is an *****.
  • simpleid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4This is actually interesting, I wonder if other modern games are inspired by ancient or forgotten games. Anyone know of any others?

    There really are no original ideas. :)
  • spriggig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah, it was called "prohibition".
  • Stonedonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Kotaku got the story from BoingBoing, where Doctorow commonly posts things he's mined from the Internet. Things that become content on other sites, or Digg stories. I should clarify, however, that Doctorow's actual site is craphound.com. BB is a collaboration of several people.
  • Fhionnlaoch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2According to BTTF 3, duck hunt like games were enjoyed with real guns way back in the 19th century. So there. :)
  • mrgreen4242, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Would be fun, and probably pretty simple, to build something like this. Hrm... off to the Radio Shack catalog!
  • osc1882, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2.. Doing some research the other day, I found out that alot of companies made "Amusement Machines" before they made video games. Nintendo made Amusement Machines, card games, love hotels and some other stuff too.
  • 1021, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3How does the subject at hand have anything to do with Doctorow? I know who Cory Doctorow is, the anti-DRM it-lawyer-type fellow with the EFF but this "joke" went right over my head, anyone mind explaining?
  • devoss, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wow. It was even HD too.
  • TheManiacKY, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wasn't there a duck hunt game in Back to the Future III in the old west of 1885? I remember fake ducks falling after shooting them with real guns and the game would reset again to allow another to shoot the same ducks.
  • DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes, Nintendo's first arcade machines were shooting games, starting in 1974. Gunpei Yokoi (Game & Watch, GameBoy, Metroid etc.) designed those machines and their mechanism.

    There was a Nintendo Wild Gunman arcade game well before the NES game. Yokoi designed a system where a 16mm projector was showing live footage of cowboys drawing their guns at you, and when you shot it switched to a second projector that had white targets on a black background, to be picked by a light-cell inside the gun. The basic principle was close to the NES Wild Gunman and Duck Hunt, and included the same anti-cheat feature where the screen would go black for a second and the game would check if you weren't pointing the gun at another light source.

    Today, doing some research myself, I found out that in 1977, Nintendo also released a projector-based Duck Hunt arcade machine, presumably featuring footage of real ducks, the first of its kind. I wonder if the laughing dog was there...

    Not to self-promote my story, but searching for more info about this arcade game lead me to discover that you can actually shoot the dog in the 80's video-game arcade version of the NES Duck Hunt. I'm a big Nintendo fan, and didn't know this until today. I submitted a little video for those who are interested:

    http://digg.com/videos_gaming/Shooting_The_Annoying_Laughing_Dog_in_VS_Duck_Hunt
  • SKOTTO, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Looks like it was a Target Exclusive. : )
  • Sethwm2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I wonder if that one in the picture still works. I would love to see it in action.
  • thebankshow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I doubt this precursor was 2 player like Duck Hunt though. (Second person could control the ducks....man I loved faking people out, almost makes me want to snicker like the dog did.)

    Still a very cool early edition....
  • iam1e3t, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@thetaoofbill
    i second that
  • sancho320, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And what exactly is 100% original?
  • Stonedonkey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2If Cory Doctorow could somehow charge a nickel for every flank move someone did on his content, he'd be loaded by now.
  • TheIconster, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2sorry to be the dupe-police but i submitted this same story yesterday...
    http://digg.com/gadgets/The_First_Electronic_Duck_Hunt_Game
  • Splizxer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Better graphics that's for sure.
  • aserer511, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I wonder if they also made a GTA clone. :P
  • NiGHTSChao, on 10/12/2007, -8/+5Just more proof that Nintendo isnt 100% original

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