How did Duck Hunt for the NES know where you were pointing the gun?
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The gun was just a simple light sensor.
When you pull the trigger, the screen goes black for 1 frame. The gun then reads the amount of light it’s seeing and sets a baseline reading.
The next frame a white square is drawn where the duck is. If the reading on the light sensor increases during this frame, it knows you’re pointed at a duck. This is why it was easy to trick by just pointing the gun at a light.
If there is more than one duck, then it would draw one square over the first duck on the first frame, then on the next frame remove that square and draw one over the next duck, etc. Since it knows what frame each duck is on, it can tell which one your pointed at by which frame the sensor gets brighter.
All this happens in a fraction of a second, and since it’s a shooting game the average player just thinks of it as a muzzle flash effect and is none the wiser.
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