The duck escaping your aim could have help from your own couch. Duck Hunt gave the second player control of its flight in the single-duck mode.
Nintendo’s Japanese Wii U manual preserves the arrangement in its control instructions: “ダックを操作する,” meaning control the duck. It specifies the directional pad on the controller that is not acting as the gun.
Game A has one duck at a time, while Game B has two. The two-player instruction belongs to Game A. That boundary saves a lot of frantic controller testing in the wrong mode.
The joke gets better because it was documented. A manual page can reveal more mischief than a supposedly secret cheat code.
The next family rematch has a new complication: the person laughing at a missed shot may have earned it.
