466 That NES Glock Gun

I get a little disappointed / overwhelmed / confused by the video game journalism industry sometimes.

This past weekend, a story “blew up” about an NES Duck Hunt controller replica made out of an actual Glock gun. I’m not going to link to the article(s) here because the last thing the topic needs is more views or another web URL pointing toward it.

And so, I feel occasionally embarrassed to call this industry my home, when it has so many journalists that perpetuate and fetishize violence as novelty (or in this case, I guess, “nostalgia?”). Maybe in 1984, when everything was easier, selling a video game system bundled with a plastic toy gun “Zapper” wasn’t a big deal. Kids innocently shot at their TVs, killing probably billions of pixelated flying ducks. No harm in that, necessarily.

Fast forward 30 years, to a time where we have an entire gaming genre devoted to shooting and killing each others’ human avatars. Somebody’s decided (and we are encouraging it!) that making a replica NES Zapper out of real metal Glock would be a great idea.

Wait, what?

Guns are not toys. It’s strange enough that we buy plastic toys that look like guns; now we’re modifying real guns to look like plastic toys?

That’s fucked up.

[ Today I Was Playing: nothing… ]

#game-opinion