Two Games
Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt
Image Source: flamingtext.com
This article is my contribution to this week's #Archdruid gaming contest: Emotional Game Moments.
Sure, I could have written about the songs that play in various video games that can make an emotionally disturbed teen break out into a tears like a sobbing baby. Any good music composer worth their salt can make that happen with a few minor chords to surprise us after hours of happy major chords.
Instead, I choose to write about the RAGE, and ANGER that is beyond compare of any other video game I have ever played.
3 Reasons
Why Duck Hunt is the most emotionally disturbing game ever:
Let's countdown backwards, so we can all experience the most climatic reasons together, from bad to worse.
#3 Guns and Video Games
Since the very dawn of video games, gamers have had to defend their taste in violent games against the women of the same strokes as of Anita Sarkeesian. Feminists and conservative parents would grandstand the reasons why games need to be censored and made more politically correct to raise a more healthy generation of kids who grow up playing video games. Cheap, crappy games were made to teach kids good morals, making kids want to do nothing more than turn off their games and plot revenge against the cruel forces who shoved these games down their throats.
King of Kings is not a King Arthur RPG game. No, instead it is a racist platformer filled with camels, a turban-adorned pagan wizard (not the magical kind), and a child-killing King. You have to memorize Bible verses to answer trivia questions that allow the levels to progress. Impressionable young minds, beware, this game is a devilish joke in disguise.
But, how did things ever turn in this direction to begin with? Video games were once an innocent past time. A child could be kept quietly occupied for hours, staying out of trouble, and giving parents a chance to relax and have a night out together thanks to the new Nintendo babysitter who works for free.
Duck Hunt ruined all that, for everyone.
We all partook of that forbidden fruit, and we all regretted the decision the moment it was over, and it could never be undone.
You see, it all started with the marketing and the Captain Nintendo cartoon show. He had this cool laser gun, called The Zapper, and he could use it to knock his foes away to another game dimension. There was no killing or blood. Just the coolest looking gun the world had ever seen, and it was being marketed for children.
Me and my Zapper.
The Zapper and Duck Hunt were often included as part of the bundle pack when a child was first gifted with the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Duck Hunt is even included within the same game cartridge as the world's mostly wildly popular game at the time, Super Mario Bros.. Almost every child of the 80's would be forced to endure the torturous trial known as Duck Hunt if they owned the NES.
Playing the game consisted of a child pointing the electrical handgun at a television screen and smashing a trigger as quickly as possible to shoot at the flying ducks on the screen. I know, perfectly wholesome and safe, right!? The goal is to knock the ducks down to the earth, presumably killing them.
The annoying sound of the gun was a cross between a label-maker gun and a stapler. The awful clicking spring would echo through the minds of everyone within the household until it caused a migraine and drove someone bonkers. The type of toy that was designed with an intentional, aggravating defect. Did they really think nobody would complain that this was a defective, abusive gun toy?
Parents became disgusted that this game was teaching children how to use guns in a foolhardy manner. Kids became increasingly disappointed that this was the only game they could find that allowed them to play with a gun in a harmless way. Due to the game's incredible difficulty levels, kids often went into wild fits with the gun and would point it into the ears and eyes of their parents and siblings, or perhaps even use the gun as a truly dangerous weapon by physically attacking the television screen itself.
I can't lie, I even put The Zapper in my mouth a few times, pretending to blow my head off to save me from the misery of this terrible game.
#2 Insane Game Mechanics
Such a simple concept behind this game. Every round a cute little mutt holds up a sign to signify the round, and then a few ducks fly across the screen. The targets were large and slow, making it easy to nail the first few ducks. Every round there would be more ducks, and the they would get faster. In later levels, the player would notice that many of their shots might miss because the ducks were moving too quickly in random directions across the screen. Missing a shot was a big deal, because you had limited ammo in each ammo, and there was no reloading allowed. Even worse, this pistol was not rapid fire, and it could not shoot rounds fast enough to hit targets clustered nearby. Clickka, clickka, clickka, clickka!
After a while, most players would practically have their faces glued inches away from the glowing screen, like Carol Ann in Poltergeist, trying to aim the gun directly at the ducks the moment they emerge, so there would be no possible way to miss. Yet, that's exactly what you could expect in Duck Hunt! Miss! Miss! Miss!
Aaaarrgggggg!
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This game, talked about in dark tones among friends, was always rumored to be unbeatable. What was the final level? Level 35? Level 40? How high do the rounds go? Nobody knew. Nobody bragged about how far they got in the game, because we all knew that we had ultimately lost a part of our souls to this game. It was the first time a game maker had slapped the face of players from across the television screen, ridiculing us from afar, despite the arduous demands of being a kid in an 80's elementary school where things were hard enough on the playground dealing with bullies and hateful tenured teachers. How dare Duck Hunt even exist!?
#1 Promotes Animal Cruelty
Here is ultimately the worst part about Duck Hunt.
The damn dog!
When you lose a round, and you will always eventually lose, this dog from hell jumps up out from the tall grass and openly laughs at the player for being a loser. The dog's got your number. When you repeat the round, you will probably lose again, and the damned dog will be right back, on queue to ridicule you once again. After losing a third time, and you most certainly will, the dog has totally demoralized you with its sinister snickerings as the game turns black with the dreaded Game Over screen.
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What the hell! There is not a player in the world, who didn't point the gun at this bully of a dog, and want to abandon their progress in the game and shoot the dog dead in its tracks. To kill the dog would be the ultimate revenge against the game.
Unfortunately, the dog is invincible. It never dies. You can't shoot it. It doesn't die when the game ends. The Zapper mysteriously doesn't have any affect on this crafty canine. In 50 years when the next poor old soul plays this game in the future, Cujo will be dead and buried in the pet cemetery, but the Duck Hunt dog will still be rising again from the grass to taunt its victims for all of eternity.
There are only two possible ways to kill the dog. Attack the television screen for immediate gratification, or take the path of the plotting killer by taking the game cartridge out into the driveway and mercilessly attack it with a sledgehammer.
The poor ducks in this game never really wrong the player, yet killing them is the objective defined by the game makers. The desire to kill the evil dog with a ruthless aggression is the ultimate, inevitable, unstoppable program that is downloaded into the brain of every once-innocent child who picks up The Zapper to play Duck Hunt.
Conclusion
So I blame Duck Hunt for every parent who has pushed the agenda that video games are the source of violence within the forming minds of our youth. To a certain extent, the parents are right. The game did turn the child into a recklessly insane maniac, unable to control their emotions, and unable to fit into society. If lawyers studied this game more deeply, they might suggest to their clients to plead "Duck Hunt made me do it", as a reputable defense in court. It was the hours, and hours of torturous cruelty they had to endure playing a game that could not be won, and provided no gratification in return. Only a faulty gun that ran out of fake bullets, and a dog on a pixelated screen asking for a death wish.
Again, I hate this game with a vengeance. For all the hype and fun it failed to be, for its massive forced exposure across the world, for making a mockery out of one of the coolest looking game gadgets every made, and for triggering 100% of children's minds to do evil. All the game makers had to do was make the game more easily winnable, and all would have been forgiven.
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Bonsai!
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