The other day, popular Twitter and Bluesky account, Wario64, posted that Big Buck Hunter Arcade was being delisted from Steam on Tuesday and it was currently $10. With the exception of an old Windows Phone version, I have never played any of the home releases of the Big Buck Hunter series, mostly because I just don’t think the game would work without the actual arcade setup. That being said, I love the arcade game, so I decided to download Big Buck Hunter Arcade to my Steam Deck.

I guess I should let people know what Big Buck Hunter is, just in case they somehow didn’t already know. Big Buck Hunter is a lightgun shooter where players take turns trying to shoot bucks while avoiding shooting does. The lightguns themselves are shotgun shaped, and you need to pump the shotgun before firing each time. While the game is hunting themed, you’re not really hunting. You’re just kind of hanging out in some woods and three bucks will run in front of you, as well as swarms of does to get in the way. You try your best to shoot the three bucks and are scored accordingly.

It’s a pretty simple game, and I guess there’s no reason it couldn’t work on a home console. The difference, of course, is that you’re not using a lightgun. Instead, there’s a visible shotgun on the bottom of the screen and using the left analog stick will aim a reticle. Hitting the left trigger pumps the shotgun and the right trigger fires. Is that fun? Honestly, not really, but it functions.

In single player, the game offers three modes. There’s the standard mode, where you choose one target, such as whitetail deer, and then go through five different locations with three bucks each. Then there’s an adventure mode, which is basically just a longer version of the standard mode, except that a woman dances before you start and then you go through three distinct biomes with five locations each. And finally, there’s a bonus only mode, where you just play bonus rounds.

I played through a full whitetail deer adventure mode. I did pretty poorly. I found that even when it seemed like my reticle was right where it needed to be, actually hitting the deer was a bit of a coin flip. It also doesn’t help that the does seem to want to surround the buck every chance they get, causing a lot of accidental “you shot a doe” messages, which ends your attempt at a location. It just doesn’t translate well to a controller, even if at its core, this is the same game I really like in arcades.

It’s also worth noting that it was kind of a struggle to play on the Steam Deck itself. By default, everything seemed to work, except that selecting the locations was very difficult. Hitting the stick would just wildly select random spots, instead of going where I wanted the cursor to go. I found that there was a community control scheme, which fixed that problem. However, this also turned out the gyro functions, and now the game would randomly decide if it wanted me to aim with gyro or with the sticks. I found that by docking my Steam Deck to the TV and using a controller, I was finally able to just play like normal. Unfortunately, it still wasn’t very fun.

So I guess I don’t really know what the point of this review is. The game is delisted, so it’s not like you’re going to be buying it anyway. But, I spent ten bucks on it, didn’t enjoy it, and felt like writing about it. I guess if there’s one thing to take away from this piece, it’s that you don’t have to feel bad for missing out on this one. Just go to your nearest Buffalo Wild Wings, they usually have a Big Buck Hunter cabinet in a corner, and have a much better time playing that.