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Comment by smeej | Hacker News Reader

I think I was in my 30s before I found out that with NES Duck Hunt, if you plugged in a controller, player 2 could control the duck.

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He can WHAT? Omg I need to go buy a Nintendo! And a CRT!

Dont bother, it sucks. The duck is still trying to fly a certain way and you're really just tugging at him.

If you want to try it out just run Duck Hunt on an emulator. You dont need a crt to just play with the duck

Parent just needed an excuse to buy a vintage tv and NES :)

Rookie mistake. My bad.

The zapper goes into port 2, and a standard controller goes into port 1.

The game manual says that you can control the duck with the control pad (which is in player 1's controller port), which would usually be controlled by a second player. This isn't a secret to anyone who bothered to read the manual.

https://www.gamesdatabase.org/Media/SYSTEM/Nintendo_NES/manu...

A bit harsh. I didn't know this. I mean, it could be that some people were not able to read english. I was too young to read english and it wasnt my native tongue. Also, my dad used to let us rent a NES and some games at our local video rental shop, so it just didn't come with a manual to read in the first place.

Who’d have figured a bunch of people who didn’t read the docs would go on to become software developers

It’s not like we need to write docs

I don't remember reading any of the manuals of any of the games I played as a kid in the 80s. I don't even remember seeing them. I just remember putting the game in the console as quickly as possible and figuring it out.

I remember getting charged $3 every time I returned a rented game without the manual.

Haha. I completely forgot that game rentals came with a manual. I remember them always being absolutely beat up, and near shredded, but usually there!

Some games weren't intuitive, or had various power-ups and items that weren't obvious. Most of the manuals for the Sega Master System and Genesis games were just a few pages, so it only took a minute to read them. (And then there were the RPGs...)

I think it was late 20s here, but I’d had the damn thing since I was like 6, including Duck Hunt. Mind was blown.

The highest purpose of this feature is to surreptitiously control the ducks while someone who doesn’t know about the feature is playing. You’ll have them cursing in no time :-)

You learn something new everyday.

um... well, I just found this out at 32... granted I don't have access to my nes to confirm this.

Can confirm. 39 now, but as a child I liked to troll my bro with player 2.

I'm 42. Was doing this at age 8. Cuz what else was I going to do during times I wasn't allowed to play but read all the manuals?

My bro was so good at duck driving he made me rage quit duck hunt.

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