This thread went downhill quickly, but I think there was a good discussion to have here.
Duck Hunt is a good reminder that some types of gameplay are older than we think. Lightgun shooters harken back to shooting games at carnivals or fairs.
And the fundamental action in the game is the same as in FPS games. FPSs are no different than paintball or laser tag in real life; both games that predate FPSs as videogames.
All these games play to the same kind of desire, mostly among men, to test our skills as marksmen and hunters. In the case of Duck Hunt, it is brought back to a less taboo and less violent level which opens up the audience for the game, but there were also NES lightgun games like Wild Gunman or Hogan's Alley where you shot the bad guys. There were also 2D side-scrolling shooters like Contra which had the ridiculous action-movie macho feel of modern FPSs, and before that the space shooters like Space Invaders. And those date back to one of the first notable games ever made, Spacewar! from 1962.
The point is not that Duck Hunt is the best-selling FPS of all time, since it was packed-in and doesn't fit the common definition of FPS. But the point is that games like our modern shooters have been around and have been very popular for a very long time.
"[Our former customers] are unable to find software which they WANT to play."
"The way to solve this problem lies in how to communicate what kind of games [they CAN play]."
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President. Only slightly paraphrased.
