Duck Hunt Amiibo

Duck Hunt's Smash amiibo is the figure of the franchise's most-meta-textual NES Zapper-game commemoration. Duck Hunt is the NES Zapper-light-gun game (1984) where the player aims the NES Zapper at the TV screen to shoot ducks; the iconic Duck Hunt Dog character is the laughing-at-the-player NPC who appears between rounds to mock failed shots. The Smash 4 inclusion (2014) was the franchise's commitment to making the Duck Hunt Dog plus a generic-NES-duck a single playable Smash slot, where the dog handles ground-game and the duck handles aerial-coverage as a tag-team character. (The franchise's commitment to elevating the Duck Hunt Dog (a character who exists only to mock the player) to a playable Smash fighter is the figure-line's most-meta-textually-aware Smash inclusion alongside Mr. Game & Watch and Wii Fit Trainer. The franchise's pre-NES-and-NES-era hardware-history commitment is unchanged across these meta-textual figures.) The amiibo released March 4, 2017.

What he does in Smash Ultimate is train as a Duck Hunt FP with the distinctive dog-and-duck tag-team moveset. The Duck Hunt FP is the franchise's most-projectile-tactical meta-textual AI fighter. Compat is 5 games.

The figure: brown-and-white Duck Hunt Dog with the duck on his head, both characters on a single base in mid-action stance. The Smash 4-era figure look carries through.

He pairs with the broader Smash Ultimate roster, particularly the meta-textual-character cluster (Wii Fit Trainer, R.O.B., Mr. Game & Watch, Duck Hunt) and the Nintendo-history-history cluster.

Duck Hunt is the franchise's most-meta-textual NES-Zapper-game Smash commemoration, and the figure-form representation of the dog-and-duck tag-team is the figure-line's quietest acknowledgment that NES-era arcade-style hardware-history deserves Smash-line commemoration. The Duck Hunt Dog laughs in your head when you look at the figure. The franchise commits to its meta-textual roster choices.