Laser Clay Shooting System

The Laser Clay Shooting System was one of Nintendo's early attempts into the video game market. They were placed in empty bowling alleys and racked in many customers. It can be considered the predecessor to many of Nintendo's video games, specifically Duck Hunt, which was actually a home console version of the game. As the title suggests, it used a light gun, just as Duck Hunt did (note: Duck Hunt was released long before the NES or Famicom was released. On these consoles Duck Hunt is best known).

Development
Nintendo veteran Gunpei Yokoi suggested to Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi the use of light guns for their products. He was particularly inspired after purchasing a rifile and heading to a skeet shooting range 1. So, with that, Yamauchi purchased a multitude of unused bowling alleys. They had become unused because the popularity of the sport had dwindled after the 60's when they were quite popular. Some of the problems they encountered were thwarted by employee Genyo Takeda, who had just joined the company.

One of the most interesting events happened on day one, and without the help of Takeda this event could've gone terribly wrong - and technically it did - but the customers didn't have to know. Something wrong happened to the programing, and to conquer this problem Takeda had to go behind the screen and personally control the clay pigeons and delete them when the customers shot at them. He also had to raise the score correspondingly. Eventually they got everything under control

1 : A competitive type of sport in which people shoot at a variety of targets, and in Gunpei's case clay pigeons. During this time, skeet shooting was becomming very popular in Japan.