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Duck Hunt clone on iPhone shot down

Yanked by Nintendo

Duck Hunt clone on iPhone shot down
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| Duck Hunt

Duck Hunt on the iPhone was always going to be in Nintendo’s sights, to be honest. It was a beautiful clone of the original NES game, that came bundled with the Zapper lightgun and helped the global video game economy recover after the 1984 market crash.

Developer Lawl Mart released the Duck Hunt game in January, but according to Macworld it’s drawn the legal eye of Nintendo, which just ordered Apple to remove the game from the App Store.

There are other very similar games to Nintendo’s Duck Hunt, though Mart’s was clearly an open graphical and gameplay clone of the NES game, which is also available for the Wii now – undoubtedly a deciding factor in Nintendo’s involvement. A sad turn of events, but ultimately an understandable one.

Strangely enough, other iPhone games are slipping by the Big N apparently unnoticed, with a new addition to the Game & Watch series of clones, GW Egg, being released at almost the exact same moment that Duck Hunt was removed.

Still, Lawl Mart promises a revamped and rejigged interpretation of his excellent Duck Hunt game any time now, so keep your sights on the App Store.

Spanner Spencer
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.