Your busy schedule may not permit a trip into the great outdoors, but hunting video games allow you to experience the virtual wilderness.
Depending on the game you’re playing, you get to face off against different animals, dangerous beasts, or an annoying dog that laughs in your face. In this post, we share five of the best hunting video games from decades past until today!
Duck Hunt
If you owned an NES Zapper gun, then you most likely played Duck Hunt. Released in 1985, Duck Hunt was many young players’ introduction to the hunting game genre. This game became so synonymous with Nintendo that Duck Hunt was bundled together with Super Mario.
Duck Hunt has a simple concept — when ducks fly across the screen, you shoot them, and the dog retrieves them for you. But when you miss, your not-so-loyal hunting dog has a laugh at your expense.
Big Buck Hunter Reloaded
The Big Buck Hunter games are essentially a more grownup version of Duck Hunt designed for bars and barcades. It’s a fun and ridiculous game with its twangy guitar licks, dancing women, and Pappy – a drunk old man who loves moonshine.
This deer hunting series puts you out in a picturesque landscape where you can quietly stalk your prey until they catch wind of you and run off. It’s a fairly easy game to pick up — just make sure that you’re shooting the bucks and not the doe.
Since its original arcade release, there have been many installments in this hunting game franchise, including:
- Big Buck Hunter Arcade
- Big Buck Hunter Safari
- Big Buck Hunter Pro (which lets two players go head-to-head)
- Big Buck Hunter Reloaded (which features zombie deer, a monster island, and Terminator robots)
Cabela’s North American Adventures
Cabela’s is a brand that’s become synonymous with outdoor, fishing, and hunting gear. In the late 1990s, Cabela’s started partnering with different companies to make a series of off-roading and hunting video games, including Cabela’s Alaskan Adventures, African Safari, and North American Adventures.
What makes the Cabela’s North American Adventures game unique is that you have a cameraman with you on the hunt. In addition to hitting your target, you have to make sure you’re hitting your mark, so the cameraman can capture the shot.
Depth Hunter 2: Deep Dive
This spearfishing game places you in different oceans all around the world, where you hunt for treasure, aquatic life, and photo opportunities. But don’t forget to catch your breath at the surface before your character’s oxygen bar runs out!
theHunter: Call of The Wild
Released in 2017, theHunter: Call of The Wild brings the hunting simulation game genre to modern console and PC gamers.
Featuring sprawling, realistically rendered hunting reserves, true-to-life firearm ballistics, and accurate animal models, Call of The Wild puts players in control of a game warden tasked with exploring reserves around the world to manage wildlife and keep tabs on local game populations.
The game is known for its short storylines that illustrate the benefits of wildlife preservation and controlled hunting.
Even though it’s not the best example of video game hunting, we also wanted to give an honorable mention to Oregon Trail. The hunting portion of this game is much more fun than reading messages about broken wagon wheels and dysentery.
Whether you’re looking for the best hunting games, first-person shooters, classic beat ‘em ups, or horror video games, check out M&P Amusement’s fantastic selection of completely refurbished and new arcade games. Please feel free to call us at (717) 887-5293 with any questions about the games or our current inventory.