Digging on a Classic

Dig Dug is a peculiar game, and although the question of why it was made is one with a simple answer, the question behind its incredible longevity and its prolific multiplication across virtually every video game console of the last twenty-five years may leave one puzzled.

What is it about this odd little game that has people coming back again and again nearly three decades after it first showed up tucked in between the Defender machine and the crowded PAC-MAN cabinet? Why have players demanded that it be ported to every platform from the Atari 2600 through the Colecovision, and the PSP through the—well, the Xbox 360™?

Our hero in action.

Don't we have Splinter Cell to be getting on with? Apparently, no … before you play Halo® 3, grasshopper, first you must again confront … Dig Dug. And deep within the metaphysical inspiration that the game will provoke, you will discover why it is that you play. And then, perhaps, you may move on.

The Back Story
Dig Dug arrived in North America in 1982 courtesy of Atari, who imported the Namco game created by Toru Iwatani following the craze of the quirky, nonviolent, and overwhelmingly successful PAC-MAN. The game's premise was extraordinarily simple—rather than force the player's character to navigate the strict confines of a maze, fleeing deadly enemies, what if the player was instead allowed to create his own maze, constraining, confounding, and defeating his enemies? Therefore, Dig Dug, our white space-suited hero, was able to tunnel through the earth, excavating a path around his enemies, leading them to their doom.

Introducing our multitasking hero, Dig Dug: Part-time
gardener, spelunker, DJ, and action hero

The Opponents
Dig Dug's cast of characters was quite simple: He had only two enemies to contend with. Pookas, of which there were many, and Fygar, of which there was only one. The Pookas were the more passive of the enemies. Looking like roly-poly walking beachballs in ski goggles, they were only dangerous if they were allowed to physically touch Dug, and since he should control most of the places Pookas can go with his strategic excavation, he has some level of control of their threat.

Fygar, on the other hand, was a little more aggressive, able to pause in his tracks and belch a jet of lethal flame, even through the packed earth of tunnel walls.

Pookas and Fygar both had a talent that complicated the issue further: They were able to turn into a ghost form and drift through the earth, sometimes threateningly toward Dig Dug, and sometimes to the upper left of the screen, where they could try and escape the level. To the left escape and to the right, flowers. To this day, there is speculation on many of the strange aspects of this game.

Huh?
Why were the Pookas under the ground? What was the nature of their conflict with Dig Dug? Was it territorial retaliation, or perhaps something deeper, like provocation from the more sinister and lethal Fygar, who dwells deeper in the earth? Did Dug and Fygar have a history? Who can truly say? What we do know is that Dig Dug has a job to do, and that is to clear the underground of these creatures by any means necessary.

Can you earn all the achievements?

Armaments and Strategy

Dig Dug does have a weapon of sorts, however, in the form of his trusty air pump. He takes on his enemies by shooting a length of hose into them and them pumping them up until, over-inflated past any safe PSI level, they pop. The pump button, the only one on the cabinet, next to the joystick, could also be released, allowing the creature to slowly deflate, so Dug could make a hasty escape. There were two reasons for doing this:

1. The music was very, very catchy, and it only played while you were on the run, and
2. By delaying the demise of your opponents, you could cleverly line several of them up and tunnel under a boulder, hopefully taking out several of your opponents at once for maximum points.

Tunneling out more than one boulder would also reward you with a PAC-MAN-style prize, which could be anything from a piece of fruit to a Galaxian warship, in one of gaming's stranger cameos. These appeared underground, and would, of course, add substantially to your score. In later levels, these would be worth far more points than slaying Pookas or Fygar.

Two Party System
The game's creators noted that arcade players fell into two distinctive groups whose gameplay rarely deviated: Offensive players and strategic players. The offensive player actively sought out the enemies and destroyed them. The strategic player favored a passive-aggressive approach, tunneling out the level, excavating the boulders, and taking out the enemies with these perilous deathtraps.

Both play styles are perfectly valid, but what's interesting is this was the first game that allowed you to take different approaches to win. In Galaga, you shot the enemy or you died. You couldn't taunt the enemy into fighting amongst themselves, you couldn't hire a lawyer to litigate against the Galaxians. You fight, you kill, and you die. Dig Dug, for a change, had a more ambiguous conflict. That was part of the delight of this quirky game: Teasing enemies by partially inflating them and then letting them go, luring them to their doom, or going Rambo on them and blowing them apart with your air pump.

An arcade classic!

The Xbox 360 version of Dig Dug recreates the single-player arcade experience very accurately: The graphics, theme music, and even some of the cabinet art has been faithfully recreated by the Namco/Bandai crew that brought us HD PAC-MAN a few months ago. Online leaderboards ensure that you'll be able to sport a Dig Dug high score with global pride, and, as always on Xbox Live Arcade, the game comes furnished with a full suite of unlockable Achievements for your gamerscore. Most are easily attained, making this game a good investment for pumping up your personal score as well as revisiting a classic bit of arcade history.

Achievements include killing two enemies in one level (easy), killing four enemies in one level (not quite as easy), digging out an entire level of dirt, and harvesting the bonus prize from every level. So, descend into the ground under the garden one more time with our multitasking hero, Dig Dug: Part-time gardener, spelunker, DJ, and action hero, to confront the Pookas and Fygar as you chart a course through the bowels of the earth.

Decide for yourself how you will confront the challenges that lie before you, grasshopper—in this game, no one has chosen your path for you. You must chose it for yourself.

Article by Xbox Addict