If you ever played Duck Hunt on your Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the ‘80s, then you know the joy and heartache of using the special (required) “controller” to shoot down those pesky ducks. Yes, we’re talking about the Zapper! Quick question, though: did you actually know it was called the Zapper before reading this, or did you search something like “Nintendo gun thing?” Because to be perfectly honest, I personally had no idea it was called the Zapper! But the Zapper it was called — at least in North America.
The gray and orange Zapper of our memories started out as a much more realistic-looking revolver when it was initially developed in Japan. The Famicon Light Gun was released in 1984 specifically for the game Wild Gunman, and looked like a real revolver-style handgun (see pic below). That wasn’t going to fly in North America, so Nintendo of America’s head designer, Lance Barr, redesigned it from the ground up for the American audience, changing it to look like a ray gun, and renaming it the Zapper.
When the Zapper was initially released in 1985 as part of the Nintendo Action Set, which also included the NES console, and two games (Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros.), the Zapper was missing that distinctive orange color we’ve all come to know and love. It started out as different shades of gray, so what made Nintendo add that distinctive orange? Well, it wasn’t really up to them, it was all because of the Federal Toy Gun Law that was enacted in 1988. After some notable police killings of teenagers using realistic toy guns, the US government enacted a law that required all toy guns to be brightly colored to set them apart from real guns. So, later in 1988 after the law was enacted, the new orange and gray Zapper was released.
Now you may be wondering: how did the Zapper actually work? How did the game know when you’d hit a duck and when you hadn’t in Duck Hunt? What was this magic? The Zapper was essentially a light gun — now that doesn’t mean it actually shoots light or anything, more that it’s a light detector. Despite feeling like a world-class shooter, you weren’t actually shooting anything when using the Zapper, instead the Zapper was detecting patterns of light on your television screen. This technology wasn’t anything new — light guns had been around in some form since the 1930s, and had even been available for some home video consoles prior to the NES.
So how did these light guns work, exactly? Using Duck Hunt as an example — when you were shooting at the ducks flying across the screen, the screen would flash briefly to a black screen, then to a black screen with white boxes representing where the ducks were on the screen. If your light gun sensor was pointing at one of those white boxes, it was considered a hit, but if it wasn’t, it was considered a miss. That quick black screen switch happened so quickly it was virtually invisible to the naked eye, so it all felt very seamless and magical to whoever was shooting the Zapper at those pesky ducks.
Alas, though, if you still have an old NES and Zapper and want to bust it out on your new LCD TV, you’ll be out of luck. The Zapper of the ‘80s relied on the fact that all televisions back then used cathode-ray tube (CRT) technology for their displays. While our new televisions are definitely better quality, they aren’t all reliable in terms of their latency. Look, we’re not going to get super technical here, but basically the Zapper needs that outdated CRT tech to work. These days, though, there are much fancier ways to interact physically with games on your television with the Nintendo Switch controls, or you can go even further and get yourself a modern arcade cabinet with a light gun upgrade that uses some special sensors. Still, there was nothing quite as satisfying back in the ‘80s as shooting down some ducks in Duck Hunt with that orange and gray Zapper.
Did you have a Zapper? Did you use it on any games other than Duck Hunt? Let us know in the comments, but first check out this commercial for the NES Deluxe Set featuring the Zapper to get your nostalgia really going:
- With light guns made prior to the Zapper, it was possible to cheat by pointing the gun right at a light bulb, making the gun think you had hit your target. But, that was not possible with the Zapper thanks to the darkness/white box sequence.
- The Super Nintendo also had a version of a light gun thanks to the Zapper’s popularity called the Super Scope, which was bazooka-shaped and 2 feet long.
- Nintendo also released a version of the Zapper for the Wii in 2007, which combined the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk into a gun shell peripheral for use in shooter games like Link’s Crossbow Training.
- The Wii U Virtual Console featured some old NES Zapper games including Duck Hunt, Wild Gunman, Hogan’s Alley, and The Adventures of Bayou Billy, which used the Wii Remote’s pointer in place of the Zapper. The Wii Zapper could also be used, though it wasn’t required.
- The Nintendo Action Set cost $149.99 when it came out in 1985, which would cost about $372 in 2021 dollars when adjusting for inflation.
- With light guns made prior to the Zapper, it was possible to cheat by pointing the gun right at a light bulb, making the gun think you had hit your target. But, that was not possible with the Zapper thanks to the darkness/white box sequence.
- The Super Nintendo also had a version of a light gun thanks to the Zapper’s popularity called the Super Scope, which was bazooka-shaped and 2 feet long.
- Nintendo also released a version of the Zapper for the Wii in 2007, which combined the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk into a gun shell peripheral for use in shooter games like Link’s Crossbow Training.
- The Wii U Virtual Console featured some old NES Zapper games including Duck Hunt, Wild Gunman, Hogan’s Alley, and The Adventures of Bayou Billy, which used the Wii Remote’s pointer in place of the Zapper. The Wii Zapper could also be used, though it wasn’t required.
- The Nintendo Action Set cost $149.99 when it came out in 1985, which would cost about $372 in 2021 dollars when adjusting for inflation.
