As featured in Retrogaming Times Monthly issue #86, July 2011.

In the early days of the Famicom, before third party developers were making original titles for the hardware, it was common to see already established properties migrate to the home system.  Namco was easily one of the hottest arcade developers of the era with colorful, well designed, and addictive arcade titles that continue to be popular to this day.  After starting out on the Famicom with Galaxian, they would release ports of Pac-Man, Xevious, Mappy, Galaga, and Dig Dug.  While the Famicom versions of some of these games would later be released on the NES, many never made the jump, Dig Dug being one of these titles.  While it makes sense that older or more obscure games like Warpman or Battle City (which was a sequel to 1980's Tank Battalion) wouldn't be good import candidates on the NES, Dig Dug was almost always regarded as one of the classics of Namco's catalog.

Dig Dug drops the player into the mining suit of the titular character with the objective to rid the underground of subterranean monsters.  These monsters come in the form of two enemies which would later become instantly recognizable as mascots of Namco - Pooka and Frygar.  Pookas resemble a large red orb wearing a pair of yellow diving goggles, with a small white tail.  Their only offense is that of touching Dig Dug, which causes instant death.  Frygars on the other hand are much more dangerous, being green dragons by design, they can breathe fire.  Unsurprisingly Dig Dug isn't very resilient to a Frygar's fiery breath, and as with a Pooka, their touch is deadly.  Dig Dug is far from defenseless against the dangers below the surface however.  In addition to being able to tunnel anywhere underground, he can harpoon Pookas and Frygars with a special air pump.  Once the pump is attached, Dig Dug pumps the monster full of air until they explode.  The air pump also works as a defense mechanism; if a monster is only partially inflated it will become stunned and unable to hurt Dig Dug until deflating completely.  This tactic can be used to thin out a herd of monsters in hot pursuit.  Additionally large rocks are littered about underground and can be mined free by digging directly beneath them.  A falling rock crushes anything in its path until bottoming out at the end of the shaft it's falling down, including our hero if he doesn't get out of the way fast enough.  Crushing multiple monsters with a falling rock is the key to racking up big scores.  After only a single monster remains on a stage, it will attempt to flee the screen to the upper left.  After it is either defeated or allowed to run away the stage ends and the next one begins.  As the stages roll on, the number of monsters on each stage will increase, as will their speed.  Additionally the game likes to stack more and more monsters atop one another to start, making it far easier to become overwhelmed.

A simple concept with simple, yet colorful graphics seems like a perfect fit for the early days of the Famicom and that's exactly what we get here.  If you imagine taking the arcade display of Dig Dug and smashing it down to fit on the horizontal orientation of a television screen, that's basically Famicom Dig Dug.  Even with the aspect change, nearly the entire game board makes the translation over.  Vertically the game area is four rows smaller on the Famicom and is less wide by two columns.  This means the game board is a little tighter which makes the Famicom version a little more difficult in terms of corralling monsters.  Even with this concession, the starting layout of each stage is still represented within reason, everything is just a little closer together.  Graphically the game is a decent recreation for this era of the Famicom.  Dig Dug, Pooka and Frygar look good with slightly lower resolution and color differences compared to their arcade counterparts.  The use of flowers on the surface as stage markers is carried over as a nice touch but Dig Dug's adventures on the Famicom must take place at night since the blue skies of the arcade version are absent.  Possibly this was deemed too difficult during the programming of the Famicom version, instead opting to just keep the entire background black throughout, or Namco didn't think anyone would care.

Audio is a very nice recreation of all the tunes and effects of the arcade.  As with the original, music only plays when Dig Dug is walking and the tempo changes based upon the phase of the game.  Falling rocks make the same cartoony squish sound once they reach the end of their descent and the sound of Dig Dug's air pump is right on key as well.  Scoring seems to be in line with the arcade version, giving more points for riskier monster elimination.  As with the arcade, dropping a pair of rocks will cause a bonus item to appear at the center of the screen.  Control is very fast with next to no graphic flicker or stutter, lending itself to a very arcade-like experience.  The only problem really comes from the smaller over all size of the playfield, which can make the game very unforgiving after the first couple boards.  Dig Dug was always a fairly fast paced game but having less space to maneuver makes is more difficult to set up multiple monsters under a falling rock.  The dirt colors also get a little obnoxious as they change during each series of stages.

Do I think Dig Dug could have made it as an NES game?  Absolutely, since Galaga sold relatively well and there were least three different yet identical releases of Pac-Man on the NES (Tengen licensed, Tengen unlicensed, Namco licensed).  It's a shame that Namco or another publisher didn't pick up the rights for an NES release of the game.  Galaxian may have been old hat by the time the NES was becoming an American gaming powerhouse but Dig Dug was still a common sight in most arcades.  Bandai actually would publish the sequel, Dig Dug II, on the NES one year after its 1985 arcade release.  However, that will have to wait until next month.  If you're a fan of Dig Dug, the Famicom version is worth checking out as it's an extremely competent port of an arcade classic that would continue to have sequels and spin-offs for years to come.  Even the character Dig Dug himself would later take on a life of his own, his official name later revealed to be Taizo Hori, "Hero of the Dig Dug Incident."  Taizo would eventually be romantically linked to the main character of Baraduke, Masuyo "Kissy" Toby, later being married and divorced.  One of their children, Susumu Hori, would become the main character of the spin-off Mr. Driller series.

Next month NES'cade will follow Taizo Hori's exploits as he adds "Hero of the South Island Incident" to list long list of achievements, with the NES port of Dig Dug II.
 

"InsaneDavid" also covers all types of video gaming at http://www.classicplastic.net/dvgi

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