Dig Dug

Dig Dug[lower-alpha 1] is a 1982 maze arcade game developed and published by Namco. It was distributed by Atari, Inc. in North America and Europe. Controlling the titular character, the player is tasked with defeating all of the enemies in each stage, done by either inflating them with air with a pump until they pop or crushing them underneath large rocks. It ran on the Namco Galaga arcade board.

Dig Dug
North American sales flyer
Developer(s)Namco
Publisher(s)
Programmer(s)Shouichi Fukatani
Composer(s)Yuriko Keino
SeriesDig Dug
Platform(s)
Release
  • JP: April 19, 1982
  • NA: 1982
Genre(s)Maze[1]
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer (alternating turns)
CabinetUpright, cabaret, tabletop
Arcade systemNamco Galaga

Dig Dug was programmed by Shouichi Fukatani, who worked on many of Namco's earlier arcade titles, and designed by junior colleagues of Galaga creator Shigeru Yokoyama. Music was composed by Yuriko Keino, becoming the first game she worked on for Namco — the short jingle made when the character moved was made when executives wanted a walking sound in the game. It was described as a "strategic digging game" by Namco for its large amount of strategy used to defeat enemies, which was heavily used in the game's marketing.

Upon release, Dig Dug was well-received by critics for its addictive gameplay, cute characters and strategy, and was a popular title during the golden age of arcade video games. It was met with a long series of sequels and spin-offs for several platforms, alongside ports for home consoles and digital storefronts. Dig Dug is also included in many Namco video game compilations for a number of systems. Characters from the game appear throughout the Mr. Driller series, itself based on the Dig Dug gameplay.

Gameplay
Arcade version screenshot

Dig Dug is a maze video game. Controlling the titular character, the player's objective is to eliminate the enemies on each screen; these being Pookas, red tomato-like creatures with comically large goggles, and Fygars, green dragons that can breathe fire.[2] Dig Dug can defeat these enemies by using a bike pump to inflate them with air until they explode, or by crushing them under large falling rocks.[2] Bonus points are awarded for squashing multiple enemies with a single rock,[2] and dropping two rocks in a stage will cause a bonus item to appear in the middle of the screen, which can be eaten for points.[2] Once all the enemies have been defeated, Dig Dug will progress to the next stage. [2]

Enemies can travel through solid dirt to reach the player, where only their eyes will be shown.[2] Inflated enemies pose no threat to the player, allowing Dig Dug to pass through them without harm.[2] The game will play a short jingle when Dig Dug moves, abruptly stopping when he becomes idle. If the player takes too long to clear a stage, the enemies will become faster and much more aggressive, indicated by a short jingle.[2] Stages are indicated by the number of flowers placed at the top of the screen.[2] Later stages feature variations in the color of the dirt, while increasing the movement speed of the enemies.[2]

Development and release

When Namco released Pac-Man in 1980, it was an unprecedented success. It sold over 400,000 arcade units in North America alone and grossed over one billion in quarters. The game helped establish the maze genre with its usage of item collecting and colored enemies that pursue the player; this concept led to the creation of several similar maze-chase games to cash in on the success. With Pac-Man and other maze games being major players in arcades, Namco sought to make another similar title that could potentially be just as successful as Pac-Man.

Dig Dug was programmed by Shigeichi Ishimura, a Namco hardware engineer, and the late Shouichi Fukatani.[3] The rest of the staff were made up primarily of colleagues of Shigeru Yokoyama, the creator of Galaga.[4] The game was based around the concept of allowing the player to make their own mazes. Pac-Man had a pre-set maze for the player to explore, but the development team thought the idea of letting players make their own mazes was interesting, and could lead to some unique gameplay mechanics. Namco described it as a "strategic digging game", a phrase heavily used in marketing material.[5] Yuriko Keino composed the soundtrack, and was her first video game project. The staff commissioned her to make a walking sound for the protagonist as he moves around the screen; Keino couldn't come up with a realistic stepping sound, so she instead went with a short melody that only played when the player was moving.[6] Hiroshi "Mr. Dotman" Ono, a Namco graphic artist, designed the sprites. The game was programmed for the Namco Galaga arcade system board. Dig Dug was published in Japan on April 19, 1982.[7] It was released in North America by Atari as part of their licensing deal with Namco.

The first home conversion of Dig Dug was released for the Atari 2600 in 1983, developed and published by Atari, which was followed by versions for the Atari 5200, ColecoVision, Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64 and Apple II. In Japan, the game was ported to the Casio PV-1000 in 1983, and later to the MSX in 1984 and the Nintendo Family Computer in 1985. Gakken produced a handheld LCD tabletop game in 1983, which replaced Dig Dug's air pump with a flamethrower to accommodate for hardware limitations. Namco released a Game Boy conversion in North America only in 1992, which featured an all-new game called "New Dig Dug" where the player must collect keys to open an exit door — this version was later included in the 1996 Japan-only compilation Namco Gallery Vol. 3, which also included Galaxian, The Tower of Druaga and Famista 4.[8] A Japanese Sharp X68000 version was developed by Dempa and released in 1995, bundled with Dig Dug II.[9] The Famicom version was re-released in Japan for the Game Boy Advance in 2004 as part of the Famicom Mini lineup.[8]

Dig Dug is included in several Namco video game compilations, including Namco Museum Vol. 3 (1996), Namco Museum 64 (1999),[10] Namco Museum 50th Anniversary (2005),[11] Namco Museum Remix (2007),[12] Namco Museum Essentials (2009)[13] and Namco Museum Switch (2017).[14] The game was released digitally for the Xbox Live Arcade in 2006, featuring support for online leaderboards and achievements,[15] which was added to the Xbox One's backwards compatibility lineup in 2016.[16] A version for the Japanese Wii Virtual Console was released in 2009.[17] Dig Dug is also included as a bonus game in Pac-Man Party, alongside the arcade versions of Pac-Man and Galaga.[18]

Reception
Reception
Review scores
PublicationScore
AllGame (ARC)[19]
Eurogamer8/10 (ARC)[20]
6/10 (XBLA)[21]
GameSpot6/10 (XBLA)[22]
IGN7/10 (XBLA)[15]
Electronic Fun with Computers & Games (A8B)[23]

Dig Dug was a critical and commercial success upon release, being praised for its strategy, gameplay and character designs.[24] It sold 22,228 arcade units in North America by the end of 1982, grossing US$46.3 million in revenue,[25] and was a popular title during the golden age of arcade video games.

American publication Blip Magazine favorably compared it to games such as Pac-Man and Defender for its simple controls and fun gameplay.[26] Allgame called it "an arcade and NES classic", praising its characters, gameplay and unique premise, and for it being easily translatable to home platforms.[19] Japanese magazine Gamest called it one of the greatest arcade games of all time in 1998, applauding its addictiveness and for breaking the traditional "dot-eater" gameplay used in titles such as Pac-Man and Rally-X.[27] In a 2007 retrospective, Eurogamer praised its "perfect" gameplay and strategy, saying it is one of "the most memorable and legendary videogame releases of the past 30 years".[20] The Killer List of Videogames rated it the sixth most popular coin-op game on their website.[28]

Electronic Fun with Computers & Games praised the Atari 8-bit version for retaining the entertaining gameplay from the arcade version and its simple controls.[23] Reviewing the Xbox Live Arcade digital re-release, IGN liked its presentation, leaderboards and addictive gameplay, recommending it for fans of the original and newcomers.[15] A similar response was echoed by GameSpot , who praised the XBLA version's colorful artwork and retaining the original arcade gameplay,[22] while Eurogamer applauded the game's addictiveness and for still holding up years after its release.[21]

Some home versions of the game were criticized for quality and lack of exclusive content. Readers of Softline magazine ranked Dig Dug the tenth-worst Apple II and fourth-worst Atari 8-bit video game of 1983 for its subpar quality and not living up to consumer expectations.[29] Eurogamer, IGN and GameSpot all criticized the XBLA conversion's lack of online multiplayer and achievements being too easy to unlock,[15][22] with Eurogamer in particular criticizing the game's controls for sometimes being unresponsive.[21]

The Xbox Live Arcade digital version of Dig Dug sold 222,240 units on the Xbox 360 console, as of 2011.[30]

Legacy

Sequels

Dig Dug was met with a long series of sequels for several platforms. The first of these, Dig Dug II, was released for Japan in 1985 and was less successful,[31] opting for an overhead perspective; instead of digging through earth, Dig Dug drills along fault lines to sink pieces of an island into the ocean.[32] A second sequel, Dig Dug Arrangement, was released for arcades in 1996 as part of the Namco Classic Collection Vol. 2 arcade collection,[33] adding new enemies, music, power-ups, boss fights and two-player co-operative play.

A 3D remake of the original, titled Dig Dug Deeper was published by Infogrames in 2001 for Windows.[34] A Nintendo DS sequel, Dig Dug: Digging Strike, was released in 2005, combining elements from the first two games and adding a narrative link to the Mr. Driller series.[35] A massively-multiplayer online game, Dig Dug Island, was publicly released in 2008, and was an online version of Dig Dug II;[36] servers lasted for less than a year, shuttering on April 21, 2009.[37]

Two Dig Dug-themed slot machines were produced by Japanese company Oizumi in 2003, both having small LCD monitors featuring animations with the Dig Dug characters.[38][39] A webcomic adaptation of the game was produced in 2012 by ShiftyLook, a subsidiary of Bandai Namco that focused on reviving older Namco game franchises, being drawn by several different artists and lasting for nearly 200 issues, concluding in 2014 following the closure of ShiftyLook. Dig Dug also appeared as a main character in the Shiftylook webseries Mappy: The Beat. A remix of the Dig Dug soundtrack appears in the PlayStation 2 game Technic Beat.[8]

The character of Dig Dug was renamed to Taizo Hori, a play on the Japanese phrase "horitai zo", meaning "I want to dig". He became a prominent character in Namco's own Mr. Driller series, where he is revealed to be the father of Susumu Hori and being married to Baraduke protagonist Masuyo Tobi, who would divorce for unknown reasons. Taizo appears as a playable character in Namco Super Wars for the WonderSwan Color and Namco × Capcom for the PlayStation 2, both of which were only released in Japan.[8][40] Taizo appears in the now-defunct web browser game Namco High as the principal of the titular high school, simply known as "President Dig Dug". Pookas would appear in several other Namco video games, including Sky Kid (1985), R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 (1998),[8] Pac-Man World (1999),[8] Pro Baseball: Famista DS 2011 (2011) and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS & Wii U (2014). Characters from the game briefly appear in the film Wreck-It Ralph (2012).[8]

Notes
  1. Japanese: ディグダグ Hepburn: Digu Dagu
gollark: Actual people, probably.
gollark: There was a raid.
gollark: The SCP Foundation took Rogers. Amnestics are being distributed shortly.
gollark: Grëetings.
gollark: Why does your stuff boot that slowly? My server is old and everything initialises after about 5 minutes waiting.

References
  1. Weiss, Brett (March 7, 2012). Classic Home Video Games, 1972-1984: A Complete Reference Guide. McFarland. ISBN 9780786487554 – via Google Books.
  2. Dig Dug instruction manual (FC) (PDF). Namco. 1985. p. 9.
  3. Szczepaniak, John (August 11, 2014). The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers (First ed.). p. 363. ISBN 978-0992926007. Retrieved August 12, 2019.
  4. Namco Bandai Games (2011). "Galaga - 30th Anniversary Developer Interview". Galaga WEB. Archived from the original on June 6, 2019. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
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  6. "『ディグダグ』の音楽はBGMでなく歩行音。慶野由利子さんが語る80年代ナムコのゲームサウンド（動画あり） - ライブドアニュース". Livedoor News (in Japanese). August 24, 2011. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved May 11, 2019.
  7. "retrodiary: 1 April – 28 April". Retro Gamer. Bournemouth: Imagine Publishing (88): 17. April 2011. ISSN 1742-3155. OCLC 489477015.
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