Safari Hunt (Sega Master System Review)

Safari Hunt
Developed by Sega
First Released September, 1986
US Launch Title
Uses the Sega Light Phaser
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

“Oh, you want to shoot ducks? Look, we at Sega have ducks too! Please don’t buy that NES. We promise we’ll have something like Super Mario at some point in the next decade! WE SWEAR!”

Never sold on its own and packed exclusively with a Hang-On cartridge, Safari Hunt seems like it’ll be a Duck Hunt slayer. After all, Duck Hunt was either the same ducks or the same skeet shooting over and over again. Meanwhile, there’s no skeet shooting in Safari Hunt. Instead, three’s three levels, each of which has three to four different animals for you to blow-away. Oh, you want to shoot ducks? There’s ducks here, along with rabbits and fish. That’s just the first level, too! In the second level, ducks are replaced with parrots, and even bears show up. On the third level, you’re taking out bats, monkeys, and ultra high scoring panthers. It sounds like it just does a better job than Duck Hunt. But, it really isn’t the Duck Hunt killer you’d think it would be.

Does the bear shit in the woods? Well, yea, because I riddle them with bullets. Actually, the bears take five bullets and yield only 2,000 points. Comparatively, the armadillos that spawn more frequently score 1,000 points. I could easily clear the qualifying score just shooting them and ignoring the birds AND the bears.

The problem is, Safari Hunt’s scoring system wrecks the whole game. In order to progress from stage to stage, you have to meet a minimum score. If your score reset, or if your cumulative score was kept separate from the individual stage score, that would work. But, all the points you’ve earned carry over from level to level. So, by time I reached level three, I could have gone without shooting ANYTHING and still passed the stage. Even worse, by the time I finished the sixth level (which was level three done a second time) I probably had enough points to just coast for several rounds, or kick back and shoot the high-yielding animals with no pressure.

If the game only spawned one or two panthers per round, that would be fine. But they spawn continuously, and while they are the hardest target in the game, they’re not THAT hard, especially for 2,000 points. Comparatively, the spiders score a measly 100 points, the lowest scoring critter in the game. Look at my score at the top, and compare it to the qualifying score needed. It’s a toothless game.

A big part of that is there’s no balance in scoring. The high-yielding animals don’t appear that less frequently than the lower scoring ones. While there is a time limit, there’s no tension because the game gives you far too many high scoring opportunities. Ultimately, what ends the Duck Hunt v Safari Hunt debate once and for all is that Duck Hunt actually does get hard. You only get three shots per group of two ducks, and the ducks move more and more erratically. That doesn’t really happen in Safari Hunt. Things might get faster, but they aren’t harder to hit. That just means rounds end faster because you’re shooting more targets. Safari Hunt made me better appreciate what Duck Hunt accomplished. That game works more as a video game with an actual challenge to it. This? It’s fish in a barrel.
Verdict: NO!
Reviewed with the Sinden Light Gun, which took my father FOREVER to set up and was not a perfect solution.