A Brief Look - Duck Hunt

Basic Synopsis:

Duck Hunt is a 1984 light gun shooter game made for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

The goal of the game is to shoot the targets (represented as ducks and clay discs), and continue to accumulate points until a Game Over is hit.

The game consists of 3 modes of play: 1) One Duck, in which only a single duck appears on the screen at a time, 2) Two Ducks, in which two ducks can appear on the screen at a time, and 3) Clay Shooting, in which “clay pigeons” appear on the screen, flying away from the player.

Technical Information:

As with most NES games, the video resolution for Duck Hunt is 256x240 in PAL, and 256X224 in NTSC.

The game supports 2 NES Zapper light guns.

Important Characters:

The game’s mascot is the Duck Hunt Dog, a hunting dog of unknown breed known for his mocking laughter when the player misses a target in modes 1 and 2 of the game:

The only other “characters” (I use that term very loosely) are the ducks that you shoot, who don’t appear to give any kind of characterization whatsoever other than being targets for the player.

Aesthetic:

As was common for NES games of the time, the game makes use of a 54-color pallete as is explained in my NES Technical/Graphics Dive.

From my own research, using the standard NTSC palette for the NES, I’ve found the color palette used specifically for this game:

The art style for the one animated character of the game, the dog, is very reminiscent of of the old animal-themed Hanna-Barbera cartoons with a slight mix with manga.

Backgrounds and non-character objects in game appear to be very simple, with some very basic lighting on the trees and grass in modes 1 and 2. Mode 3, Clay Shooting, doesn’t appear to have much shading at all for many non-character objects.

Size and Proportions of Assets:

Naturally, the background is fullsize, at 256X224 pixels.

The UI elements, from top to bottom, occupies approximately the bottom 1/5 of the screen.

The two left-most UI elements, representing the round number and the number of shots availble, set at 24X8 and 29X21 pixels respectively. There seem to be about 5 pixels of padding vertically between the UI elements.

The middle-most UI element, representing the amount of ducks hit successfully (marked by red ducks or clay disks) and ducks missed (marked by white ducks or clay disks), sits at approximately 117X21 pixels. This UI element appears to be centered in frame.

The right-most UI element, which appears to be the scoreboard containing 6 digits (the highest score achievable appears to be 999999), sits at 53X21 pixels.

There appears to be approximately 11 pixels between each horizontal element, suggesting that the UI might be part of one single element.

Left side appears to have 21 pixels of padding between the left border of the game and the UI elements, and 14 pixels of padding between the right border of the game and the UI elements.

Padding from the bottom of the UI elements to the bottom border of the game appears to be 6 pixels.

The last UI element, the title card, is approximately 49X33 pixels, and (using our previous 1/5 proportion) appears to occupy the second 1/5th of the total screen.

The dog seems to be approximately 55X43 pixels.