Z Generation doesn’t know: How did the duck shooting gun work in Atari?

In this news article, we’re going back in time a bit. Everyone will remember Atari, which engraved itself in our memories with its red and blue colors, and its giant game cartridges. Atari was actually a brand on its own, not just the name of a game console, but children of that time had associated the brand with the game console. Additionally, if you remember, Atari used to include a gun with its boxes. Almost every child would spend days trying to learn how to use the Atari guns and hit the targets. Here are the details…

It consumed our childhood! What was the working principle of the Atari gun?

Undoubtedly, Ataris were the most iconic products of the 90s. However, an important detail is that Atari was not actually the name of the game consoles. Atari was a brand that produced its own game consoles and exclusive games. In Turkey, the Atari brand became so closely associated with game consoles that people preferred to simply say “Atari” instead of “game console,” etc.

In this article, we will continue to use the name Atari. When you opened the Atari box, you would find a small console, two controllers (Ataris were not stingy like Sony PS), a keyboard, and a gun. Many of us could never figure out how to use the Atari guns, so we ended up throwing most of them into our toy baskets and using them as toy guns.

So how did these guns work? We weren’t expecting a magnificent technology. Atari guns operated on a very simple technology. The entire system was based on a physics principle called photoelectric effect. According to the photoelectric effect, when you expose electrons to a light source, their movement starts. In other words, light will release electrons from the surface it is attached to.

The same principle applied to Atari guns. Let’s say you opened the famous Duck Hunt game on your old tube television. The old generation CRT televisions could provide between 60 and 85 frames per second. In other words, if we think in terms of computer game logic, there was a “frame-by-frame” progression, which we call image quality, but back then, nobody cared about these details. The important thing was to have fun.

This feature of CRT televisions worked well for the gun. When the game started, the duck would start flying away from you. You would aim and pull the trigger. When you pulled the trigger, without you noticing, the screen would turn black for a split second. And during that moment, the area where the duck was would turn completely white. The photoelectric diode inside the gun would generate an electric current when exposed to the white light. This meant that you hit the target.

Of course, we’re talking about a very simple system here. Basically, all you had to do was aim the gun at a light source that would illuminate the room and fire. This way, you would hit all the targets in the game. Now, your curiosity about the Atari gun and that magical world is probably over. But don’t worry, even not being able to hit the targets with it was a lot of fun.

What are your thoughts on our article “How do Atari guns work?”