The best game of all time!

I hate the 80s. There, I said it. Maybe now we can all end this nauseating facade of girls adorning sparkly outfits, singing strangely and dreaming that they're Kate Bush (who wasn't all THAT good you know.) and the bizarre ritual of men forcing themselves into ridiculous, testicle-suffocatingly tight trousers. You know why there wasn't a huge baby boom after the 80s? Because no-one's nadgers worked.

HOWEVER! I will say this for the 80s. It did bring us one good thing (aside from myself of course). It was responsible for one of nature's finest pleasures. Of which man has been tasting the delights of in far more quantities than can be considered anything other than a hindrance to productivity ever since. The 80s was, of course, the advent of the home video game. And the epitome of these glorious first steps was that most angular of beauties; the Nintendo Entertainment System. Yeah, that's right. No gimmicky, strange, neo-modern vowel manipulation and bizarre sexual based console names of today. Just the facts. Nintendo Entertainment System. 

It was quite frankly spell-binding to me, at the tender young age of something very small. A single box with its massive flapping front panel lid hiding one can only be described as a desk drawer which was where all the magic happened. You just slid in one of the vast cartridges, pushed it home and pressed the on button. Then pressed the on button again, took the cartridge back out again, blew on the end for several minutes before putting it back and starting again. Despite these dusty problems, it still seemed so unbelievable that this single block of plastic could bring forth these fantastic visions upon your television. If someone had told me then that in the future you would be able to talk to anyone directly across the whole world whilst buying something from somebody else whilst playing 3D games all on a single device about a third of the size of these cartridges... well I probably would have asked for one then and there. But to more mature eyes and ears I'm sure that information would have been frankly sectionable. 

But, to be brutally honest. It was so much better then. Oh sure, people may argue that the realism of shooting down terrorists in the recent Modern Warfare games is unsurpassed by anything. Or that the unbelievable social abilities within gaming online is the only way to play games. But to this I say: why? Why is going around recreating war skirmishes 'good gaming'? Why is the constant repetition of killing beasts and mining gold to gain progress in a game 'fun'? And in further response I will say this. The greatest game that there has ever been and possibly ever will be is Duck Hunt on the NES. Call it favouritism through childish eyes, call it activism because of disillusionment. Call it whatever you want. In the end there can be no denial that what I say is the truth. And secretly, you all know it.

I think therefore it is wise to say why it is SO good. Firstly, I feel it is important to bring up the intended controller. The Zapper. The bright orange, stupidly angular, stupidly 80s futurism attempt at a ray gun that you were told you would be shooting ducks with. It was amazing. It was (at the time) like holding the future in your hands. you were aiming at a pane of glass, pressing a button, and influencing the area of the glass that you were pointing at. I still am not entirely sure how it works, mainly because I never bothered looking it up as I preferred to just leave it as being magic. But I defy anyone to say it's not the coolest controller any console has ever had. I would happily buy one now for no reason other than to take it out and say "LOOK WHAT I GOT!!!" as I beamed with joy. However, I have no money.

But OK. This is not the game. It is nothing really to do with the game. It is fairly far removed from the standards contained within the game. So lets move on. If we were to assume that the reasoning behind playing a game is to enjoy ourselves. To distract ourselves from everyday life. Then I find it very hard to see how many of the games available today allow for that. Most games have taken on far too serious a struggle in its search for something to progress the game on. Duck Hunt, however, is the pinnacle of unreality. Perhaps it was the ridiculously flat graphics, the strange willingness of the ducks to make drastic 180 degree turns to remain within shot until deciding upon flying vertically upwards, indicating he had been a chance missed. Perhaps it was the laughing dog that probably drew more gunfire than all the ducks put together. But the overall feeling when playing the game was essentially just joy. It made you feel good (apart from the bloody arrogant dog... but even then you couldn't help enjoying blasting away at his stupid smug face). It was stress relief, not stress addition which is what I find myself feeling with some games these days. And maybe that's OK. Maybe it's part of human nature to bring stress upon ourselves. But surely more so we enjoy just daft, fun breaks from reality. Duck Hunt provides this in spades. The way the ducks would totally ham up getting shot. The excited way your dog would leap behind a single line of really high grass. The fantastic sound that the game developers decided was like a gunshot. It all came together so that, when you finally told to stop playing so that the grown ups could watch some actual telly, you had a grin on your face. You hadn't achieved anything, you hadn't finished a story. You'd just had fun. And there aren't any other games that did it so well.

To Duck Hunt. The best game of all time!