We don’t know quite why this is all going on - there’s a peripheral story about Dig Dug’s garden being infested, but unlike, say, Donkey Kong, we’re not privy to all that - but we stay for Dig Dug’s flexibility. Whereas Pac-Man‘s abstract in its chase system - a circle munches up dots while under pursuit by ghost blobs - Dig Dug presents an interactive cartoon featuring the loosest of narrative namely, an exterminator of sorts - “Dig Dug” in localized territories and “Taizo Hori” in Japanese media, with the latter being a Japanese pun (“Horitai zo” meaning, “I want to dig!”) - goes spelunking, engages in cartoon chase sequences with hostile creatures, and then inflates/blows up said enemies. Much of the development behind Namco’s 1982 hit remains shrouded in mystery - as far as we English-speaking players know, its inception isn’t credited to any one individual (Wikipedia cites Shigeru Yokoyama, but, well, it’s Wikipedia besides, it ain’t sourced), and its main programmer in Shouichi Fukatani sadly passed away in 1985 - but regardless, Dig Dug was a mainstay of the Arcade Golden Age in no small-part to its fun visuals, cute cast, and, I suspect most of all, its eye-grabbing concept. And so a lifelong addiction was born.Ĭontrary to what you may’ve expected, this humbling anecdote does not illustrate my arsonist origin story nay, I speak merely of Dig Dug‘s timelessness. As poor Pooka expanded, swelled and burst into pieces, an ecstatic grin formed as I recognized that, yes, this was indeed a game about blowing stuff up. Resting my fingers on the trigger button (mysteriously titled “pump”), I casually tunneled my way towards one of the walking balloons - a red, goggle-wearing goon dubbed “Pooka”– and watched with wonder when, as advertised, a pump sprang from my character and latched onto the pudgy critter. Intrigued, I fished out a quarter, inserted it, and observed as a man in a hazmat suit burrowed deep beneath the earth, infested by sentient balloons and nasty dragons. The memories of this particular occasion have grown cloudy - I remember not whose birthday it was, let alone any occurrences other than stumbling across a new arcade cabinet in the game corner: Dig Dug. Long, long ago in the halcyon days of 2000 - what, were you fossils expecting the 80’s? - eight-year-old me found himself yet again at Inline 309: an in-door skating rink popular for birthday parties. Today’s review is based upon the original arcade Dig Dug included within PlayStation 3’s PSOne Classic re-release of Namco Museum 3, originally released for PlayStation. But why is that the case? Join Anthony on his 8-Bit Chronicles, wherein he studies the industry’s building blocks in famous coin-munchers, failed experiments, and obscure gems. The innate addiction coded within the circuit board-powered arcade cabinets and NES cartridges render them precious artifacts, their primitive graphics and relative brevity revered even today. Bleeps, bloops, and pixels: the cornerstones of classic gaming.
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