Fukatani passed away in mid-1985, in the midst of working on a few of Namco’s Famicom titles. Programming work for this title is credited in part to Fukatani Shouichi, whose work we have seen in prior titles like Cutie Q, King & Balloon, and Warp & Warp. It has that difficult to quantify “game feel” that Namco had demonstrated an almost preternatural capacity to imbue into its finest works. I do feel it says a lot for the game that, even in throwing myself at the same few levels in vain, it still manages to be a pleasurable experience. I tend to go hard on trying to drop boulders on enemies for points, but often wind up getting cornered or hoisting myself on my own petard in a self-crushing accident. Even here, a cute touch is added: rather than use the epaulettes and badges of Galaga to demarcate your progress, Dig Dug adds flowers to the top of the playfield (again, fertilized by the blood splattered about by the ruthless Taizo Hori).ĭig Dug is a very good arcade game, but as I mentioned above I remain fairly rubbish at it. Slaughter the entire level’s assembly of baddies and move on to the next. The Fygars are generally fewer in number, but come with the added ability to breath fire (through, as it turns out, the narrow slice of compacted earth between two tunnels). The Pookas, with their outsized goggles and armless Kirby silhouettes, make for adorable but persistent opponents. Score points by digging terrain and killing monsters, all the while they pursue you via insubstantiating themselves and phasing through the ground in your direction. Alright, so I’ve exaggerated the blood, but that’s an apt description of the game flow. I say grim, as this is a game about crushing cute little ball people to death with rocks or, in a truly grisly twist, forcefully pumping them full of air until they violent rupture and pain the walls of their dark cavernous homes with blood. This playful music serves to make navigating subterranean tunnels feel far more lighthearted than the grim reality of the game. Taizo Hori himself is represented by a properly chibi sprite (never mind his dollar store Speed Racer getup on cabinet art), and programmers Fukatani Shouichi and Sakai Toshio pulled off a masterstroke by linking Keino Yuriko’s score to Hori’s movement. But where these games would insert charming elements into otherwise standard arcade fare, Dig Dug is positively larded with cuteness. From the walking bonus target in Cutie Q to the simple designs of Pac-Man, and even the aliens in the obscure Warp & Warp, Namco’s in-house designers had conjured a few adorable character designs. Seriously, I look at this Taizo Hori key art and cannot help but think of Speed Racer.Ĭertainly Namco had dabbled with oppressively cute design over the years. With Dig Dug, we get a foray into new territory: a game where everything is cute. Those two years saw exploration of themes such as driving in terrible mazes, shooting at aliens as a man, shooting at balloons as two men, shooting at aliens, and even the famous “shooting at ships as a ship” subgenre of games. The game nevertheless represents the boldest stylistic step to date by Namco, who at this point were nearing the second anniversary of their landmark Pac-Man. I’ve never quite gotten the flow of Dig Dug down to a point where I can get much past the first four or so levels. Driller’s adventures and his father’s first outing, I’m team Driller every day of the week. Taizo Hori, aka Dig Douglas, is the canonical father of Mr.
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