Duck Hunt
Date Initially Beaten: Unknown
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
A light-gun shooter released for the NES in October 1985 (or April 1984 if you lived in Japan), Duck Hunt came out about three years before I was born. One of my earliest memories as a human being is of playing this game - it might even be the first video game I ever played, actually - which means we would have had it in the early '90s in Georgia, USA. Naturally I don't remember too much, with the sound effects being what stuck with me the most: the intro music when you begin a game, the jingle it plays when the dog shows the ducks you killed, the sound of the gunshot, and the dog's bark as he jumps into the grass; and, of course, his damned laugh when you fail. I do know that I tried to shoot that dog on multiple occasions, and if I were playing Vs. Duck Hunt, the arcade version of the game, I would have been able to!
I played the game with my brother and mom. I seem to remember her getting on to us for pressing the barrel of the NES Zapper against the television screen when we were trying to "cheat". For our multiplayer, I think we just took turns with the Zapper as opposed to hooking up an NES controller so another player could control the ducks. I'm not sure we even knew about this two-player option!
I always thought the copy we owned contained the original Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt, not Super Mario Bros. The version I have in my head doesn't seem to exist, so we must have owned Mario Bros. separately. This leads me to believe that my family bought the NES "Action Set" bundle, released in 1988. From Wikipedia's NES article:
... the NES was released in four different bundles: the Deluxe Set, the Control Deck, the Action Set and the Power Set.
...
The Action Set, however, was released in 1988 was sold for US$149.99 and came with the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual game pak containing Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt.
I didn't know that! We wouldn't have owned the Action Set until the early '90s, however, as we didn't own any game consoles until we moved to Georgia, which was sometime in either 1990 or 1991. I suspect this was because we lived in Germany beforehand.
Some may question why Duck Hunt is on my "Game I've Beaten" list. Games that don't have a defined end (reaching the kill screen after level 99 doesn't count) can be added to the list as long as I experienced most, or all, of the content the game has to offer. Playing all three modes in Duck Hunt qualifies for this (though I was never really a fan of the clay shooting), as the game doesn't really change throughout. I do wish I had some record of my highscores or even the latest round I reached, though.