Games played on three-in-a-row boards can be traced back to ancient Egypt where such game boards have been found on roofing tiles dating from around 1300 BC. An early variation of tic-tac-toe was played in the Roman Empire, around the first century BC. It was called terni lapilli (three pebbles at a time) and instead of having any number of pieces, each player only had three, thus they had to move them around to empty spaces to keep playing. The game's grid markings have been found chalked all over Rome. Another closely related ancient game is three men's morris which is also played on a simple grid and requires three pieces in a row to finish, and Picaria, a game of the Puebloans.
The different names of the game are more recent. The first print reference to "noughts and crosses" (nought being an alternative word for zero), the British name, appeared in 1858, in an issue of Notes and Queries. The first print reference to a game called "tick-tack-toe" occurred in 1884, but referred to "a children's game played on a slate, consisting in trying with the eyes shut to bring the pencil down on one of the numbers of a set, the number hit being scored". "Tic-tac-toe" may also derive from "tick-tack", the name of an old version of backgammon first described in 1558. The US renaming of "noughts and crosses" as "tic-tac-toe" occurred in the 20th century. In 1952, OXO (or Noughts and Crosses), developed by British computer scientist Sandy Douglas for the EDSAC computer at the University of Cambridge, became one of the first known video games.The computer player could play perfect games of tic-tac-toe against a human opponent.
In 1975, tic-tac-toe was also used by MIT students to demonstrate the computational power of Tinkertoy elements. The Tinkertoy computer, made out of (almost) only Tinkertoys, is able to play tic-tac-toe perfectly.It is currently on display at the Museum of Science, Boston.
Duck Hunt is a 1984 light gun shooter video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) video game console. The game was first released in Japan in April 1984, followed by an arcade game port released for the Nintendo Vs. System in North America in March 1985. It was then released as a launch game for the NES in North America in October 1985, with it also releasing in Europe two years later.
In Duck Hunt, players use the NES Zapper in combination with a CRT television to shoot ducks that appear on the screen.The ducks appear one or two at a time, and the player is given three shots to shoot them down. The player receives points upon shooting each duck. If the player shoots the required number of ducks in a single round, the player will advance to the next round; otherwise, the player will receive a game over. The game initially received few reviews, but was given mild critical praise in later retrospective reviews.Prior to the NES version, Nintendo also made a Duck Hunt game based on the Laser Clay Shooting System released in 1976.
Beginning with the nationwide roll-out of the NES in 1986, Duck Hunt was one of several titles Nintendo included as a pack-in game with some of its releases. The initial Deluxe Set included Duck Hunt and Gyromite. The later Action Set was packaged with Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros., which was the pack-in for an upgraded Basic Set; unlike with those releases, Nintendo opted to place both games on one cartridge as opposed to having separate individual cartridges. The last NES release to include Duck Hunt as a pack-in was the Power Set, which came with the Power Pad; for that particular release, the multicart added World Class Track Meet as a third selectable game with Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. The game was released as a Virtual Console title for the Wii U in 2014.
