Retronauts - 729: Digging in Video Games

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

Video games: can you dig it? Yes, and you can also dig IN them—which is the point of this week's podcast. What started as one man's dream to bury aliens alive has remained a viable concept in video games to this very day; Donkey Kong Bananza, we're looking at you. But how has this simple concept evolved over the years, allowing us to safely simulate tunneling underground without getting our fingernails dirty? On this latest installment of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Diamond Feit, and Jeremy Parish as the crew assembles in a Portland hotel room and imagines a new life underground. Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get two full-length exclusive episodes every month, as well as access to 100+ previous bonus episodes, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

This week on Retronauts, please call before you dig. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackie, And this time around, we are talking about digging. Because since the dawn of mankind, we have yearned to tunnel underground and hide from everything. But in our modern times, we can do this without getting our fingernails dirty. So in an episode very much inspired by Donkey Kong Bonanza, we're going to be looking at games in which digging plays a major,

or at least an interesting role. So you don't have to play Bonanza to understand what we're talking about here, but it is the most digging focused game I have ever played in my life. I've already introduced myself. Who else is here with me today? Hello, this is Diamond Fight, and I was just digging into a breakfast burrito. It's true.

We could have miced that and included that as an eight-minute extra. The special misophonia version. By the way, Diamond and I are wearing matching Nintendo Museum shirts of the least popular consoles. Yes, Bob's got Wii U, I've got Virtual Boy. Now, I got this shirt because I'm virtually a boy, but I know your wife got this one too, so we really are. We've got a pair of look going on here. I don't know what this signifies about me, but I hope it's not anything to do with the Wii U. and who else is here?

Hey, it's Jeremy Parrish. I'm trying to open up the places we got hurt. And, yeah, we are also recording this on a very rainy Sunday morning in a Portland hotel room in case you're wondering why we sound a little off, but we just got off of a big panel that was great, and we're going to be doing another one today. But we're trying to maintain our energy for an early recording, way earlier than I'm used to, at least. But I want to know from both of you, how do we feel about digging games, and especially How does it compare to swimming in games?

Because swimming in games can go very wrong. I feel like digging in games always a satisfying experience. Yeah, swimming is a nightmare for me in real life. But also in video games, it's really dangerous because whether you go physics-based or just whatever-based, I feel like it always rewrites the rules. You know, you were used to running and jumping, and now all of a sudden you're moving very slowly or this force is pulling you down that weren't there before. Whereas digging, you generally have complete control.

Do I want to go this way? Do I want to play? So many games let you dig up. You know, that was a Sintz's joke. The Sips predicted it. That should have been my opening line. Dig up, stupid. But, yeah, I think digging is satisfying just in the way that so many elements of games that

let you, you know, control your inventory, control your environment, tidying up, if you will. I think digging is essentially tidying if you look at it from, you know, an environmental standpoint. Oh, this is this dirtier. I want to go over here now. suddenly I've made a nice, neat tunnel to go from left to right. And, you know, if you want it to create it, you can, like, dig little patterns. It's, yeah, it's fun for the whole family.

It's very satisfying. Jeremy, digging. Digging is how you find potatoes, and, like, all of us, I just think they're neat. And it is better, yes, it is better than swimming. Physics does, the, digging doesn't require you to have a modal change for your controls. There's no, like, now you are swimming, and now everything works differently. Whereas swimming, yeah, that's, that's fraught. No one has invented inverted digging controls yet, as far as I know.

Thank God. I mean, I brought up swimming, but we're talking about swimming. Swimming is in real... So I feel like the appeal of swimming in real life is a lot easier, I guess, if you know how to. But essentially, you can still float, even if you don't know how to. But digging in real life is very difficult. I have not dug anything in a very long time. I don't know about either of you.

But when you're a kid, you have the dream of digging to China, potentially, or just like, I'm going to go in the backyard, dig a really big hole. Either you get tired or your parents stop you because they think you're going to going to hit a gas line. These days I mostly am spending my time keeping dogs from digging. Like our neighbor's dog really likes to come under our fence and kill the rabbits that live under our shed. And my parents' dog just likes to dig because she's a corgi and she's weird. That's what they do. But there's a load of the ground. It's like they're already there. Yeah. It's like they're already there. Yeah. Where do my feet go? It must be under here. Yeah, but I have no desire to

dig anymore. One of my first jobs was working for the USDA in West Texas. So that meant going out in a cotton field sometimes and having to dig things up or the truck getting stuck in the mud and having to dig that out. So I had enough of that as a kid. I don't need it anymore. Now it feels like something digging is mostly prisoners are forced to do. We don't have a digging class of worker anymore, like firefighting. You know, I thought about it. And the last time I actually had a day a whole of any significance was, geez, about 10 years ago, working in Japan as an English teacher, I found a dead bird in the hallway of the school. And I was like, oh, well, this shouldn't be here. So I told the people in charge, hey, there's a dead bird out there. It's like, oh, yeah,

why don't you go, why don't you go pick that up and bury it? And I was like, you're now a gravedigger. Yeah, I just think. That seems like a custodial kind of task. Yeah, I know. I mean, Japan is weird. They don't really have, like, staff. Oh, yeah, that's true. It still felt really weird to me. It's like, wait, I told you there's a dead bird in the whole way, so now my reward is I get to bury it. So, whatever. I found a spot for it.

I buried it in some sort of bag, and I don't know if I said any words over the corpse, but... Yeah, you find it, you're responsible for its, you know, immortal soul. Yeah, so I learn my listen. Never tell them anything I'm never getting. The next time you see a dead bird, you say it was like that when I got here. And also, what dead bird?

I didn't see it. So, yes, we all love digging. Digging in real life is dangerous. It's hard. You have to put in buttresses. You have to worry about suffocating. It's claustrophobic. But video games, they give us the freedom to dig as much as we want.

So I'm looking today at digging in games, either digging as like a major mechanic or games with like a level where you dig. And I have to start where it all started. Heonkio Alien. So Jeremy, Diamond and I are going to leave the room now. If you want to do a tight 20, we'll come back. Sure. But yes.

Well, I mean, I have my own notes. But Jeremy, I could just like hit a button and let just let you go. I mean, what do you want me to say about digging in Hayanko Alien? I mean, this is one of the first video games in a traditional format. Yeah, I mean, so the thing about Hayanko Aliens' digging is that it's not a navigational mechanic, it's a trap mechanic. So, you know, in the sense, that sense it's kind of like Load Runner. I mean, load runner was inspired by it, but you're creating a space on the top-down view where, you know, basically enemies can't traverse. So it's not as liberating and fun as digging in future games would be,

but it is an important tactical consideration. I just think it's interesting that this early, that was a go-to idea. Like, what if we dug a hole? Yeah, it was like you're an Edo area, Edo era policeman. You don't have a gun, not even a blunderbuss. You've got to stop the aliens somehow because they've decided to take over, or sorry, not Eto, Heon-Eon era. Heyan era Kyoto

794 to 1185 Yeah so they came down Way early and You know your only defense is a shovel But fortunately the aliens are very stupid And they will walk into a hole if you dig it And then it's up to you to keep it in the hole By putting dirt over its head

Yeah I'm not sure if you're familiar with the movie signs But there was a big complaint in that movie Like why would the aliens land on Earth If they are allergic to water Well this is the first instance of that happening It's susceptible to small holes in the ground. But then you can bury them alive, right? Yes.

Okay. Yeah, that's how you win. Basically, every level in Hayanko Alien is a top-down, not quite a maze, but it's a space with a lot of passages and obstructions where, you know, everything is like a narrow passage. And so you have to run around avoiding the aliens, and your only ability is to dig a hole. and that's a fairly slow process it takes a couple of seconds to properly dig a hole as in real life

and the aliens will blunder into the holes and if they do that then you need to rush over within a few seconds and then cover over the alien by filling in the hole and that will destroy the alien

but you also can't pass over the hole yes while the aliens are yeah go ahead yeah no in the Game Boy version if you try to go over the hole you just stop there but the aliens will stumble into it I guess you're smarter than the

the aliens. And this is a maze game right before Pac-Man. So Pac-Man is a little more thoughtful about this, I guess, but more technology is on their side. But in this game, you're not collecting anything. There is no power-up. It is just you in this maze with these aliens. And it does kind of remind me a bomber man, because you're setting traps you can also screw yourself over with. So if you dig a hole, you could trap yourself in an area where you can't escape from. So Hayanko Alien is interesting because, one, it wasn't a game developed by a company. It was developed by a bunch of students at the Tokyo Science Group or something like that, TSG. And it was popular enough on microcomputers that it very quickly spread, and they produced an arcade version of it.

And from there, it ended up on a bunch of consoles and computers. But it's one of the first games, maybe the first game that had a strategy guide for it. Like not like a full, you know, thick Brady games kind of guide. But there were computer magazines at the time where people would share strategies for various kind of approaches to digging and setting up traps and setting up kind of using the holes as defense barriers for yourself and sort of pinning yourself in and hoping that you wouldn't get double teamed from one side. So, you know, it was very influential. It was released around the same time as a sort of racing game. I don't know if you've heard of it called Head On, which was developed by Sega. and then Nintendo actually released an arcade version of it called HeadOn In.

But a lot of people have released versions of head-on or variance of it. But Head-on is just, it's basically a series of concentric squares that are lanes, and you drive through every lane collecting dots, and there are gaps in certain spots in the lanes, and you can switch to a different lane. At the same time, there's another car coming at you in the opposite direction, and it will be very aggressive and try to hit you. And it feels like these two are of a piece.

But head-on is very much about like very quick gameplay. Like a round of head-on will take a few seconds because, you know, like 10, 15 seconds because the other car is moving quickly. There's not a lot of space to cover. But, Hey, Angeo Alien is a more methodical game. It's slower and more strategic. You know, there's three to five aliens per stage and you're setting up holes and you have to wait for them to wander into it.

sometimes you want to, you know, chase them down, but you have to be careful that you don't get too fixated on catching one alien and let the other sneak up behind you. The maze is more complex. It's not just concentric squares. So there's a lot of variety to it. But, I mean, I think if you do combine those games, you end up with Pac-Man. And then if you turn Hayanko-Alion on the side, you get space panic,

and then you get Load Runner. So, you know, a lot of things kind of came out from, hey, on Gilalien, and it's one of those games that continues to be kind of revisited, and there was a Famicom version released finally, like, five years ago. Well, actually, I mean, I didn't know what this was in Jeremy until you started doing your Game Boy Works videos, because I guess I never bothered looking into it, and that's because I would see this in the pages of Nintendo Power because of the Game Boy version as, I don't know, an eight or nine-year-old, I was like, well, I don't know how to even say this word, I don't

know what it means. I don't think they took any lengths to explain what it meant to the audience. And then you have the, you've uploaded the cassette tape promo for the game, which features the one and only Tony Jay reading ad copy about being one of the first 80 to buy Haydhanyahu alien

and getting a t-shirt. I can't make my voice as deep as Tony Jays, by the way. That's the best I can do. But, yeah, I don't know if that was a commercial distribution or if it was something for just trade shows. Yeah. I'm not sure what the provenance of that Hayanko Alien tape is, But that was published in America, and maybe in Japan, but definitely in America by Meldac, which was a jazz record label.

And they did not go out of their way to make the few video games that they published here accessible or mass market. They picked really obscure stuff. And the packaging and advertising they used was very artsy. Like, you can believe this was a jazz label. The packaging for the U.S. version of, Hey, Ankyo Alien is just this solid red box. And then kind of like a, you know, period-appropriate Japanese style illustration, like a watercolor sketch of a policeman kind of fighting off a giant blobby alien as it attacks him. And it looks like something you would have seen and, you know, like a scroll from that era. And, you know, it has the title, Hey, Yankee, Alien.

Then the next game they released was Mercenary Force. And the cover for that looks like a KFMDM album cover, which is cool. that's not what like 11 year olds in 1990 were jumping up to get for their game game game game I mostly think of zombie nation when I think of Meldak because it's a very Japanese premise that they try to turn into something else I guess where you're a floating head it's a floating head shooter yeah yeah yeah so they

they released some weird games and made no effort to make it accessible to people but yeah I didn't know what it was either until I started doing my game boy videos and I actually kind of came across it after playing a game that it inspired, which was Boomer's Adventure and Asmic World, which is literally just Hayanko Alien plus power-ups. And then, you know, I did my

Boomer video, and a few months later, I did Hayanko Alien. It was like, hang on a second. And then I started looking into it and realize that, like, this is a very influential game. This is not like a rip-off of Boomer. It's, like, this is the game that's being ripped off by everyone. So it really has tendrils

that spread out, you know, roots, you might say, digging into video game history if to bring it back to the topic. You're planting aliens, growing alien trees. Exactly. But yeah, I did want to cover this because it is one of the first traditional games.

It involves digging. But we're not just going to talk about games where you can dig a hole because there's a lot of those, like Animal Crossing, you can dig a hole. A lot of, like, link to the past, you can dig a hole. But it all began here. And we were talking about a load runner,

which we're not going to cover. But this, I think the chain goes, this inspires Space Panic, which I think is a Sega game. And then Space Panic. Oh, it's universal. Okay. And then that inspired Load Runner directly.

So there was a chain from this game to Load Runner. And Load Runner, I guess, to be reductive, it's side-scrolling. Hey, Onkyo Alien. Yeah, kind of. And it kind of feels a little bit like they, you know, they played the final stage of Donkey Kong where you're collapsing the girders. Yeah. And said, what if instead of collapsing the girders, you could just drop through those holes

and you didn't, you know, like, instantly die? What if you could use that to evade? and yeah, so it kind of brings together a lot of ideas. So we're going to move on to a game. So we're going to move on to a game with digging, in the title, and that is DigDug from 1982, the most digging focus game we're going to cover. So yes, this launches smack dab and the golden era of the arcades. And how ingenious it is, is that the digging works automatically. You just use the joystick to move up down left and right.

And the only indication that you're digging is this little drill-like protrusion that appears on the character sprite as you're moving through the solid material. So you miss the feeling you get when you get a dig button, like the satisfying feeling of just, you know, changing the game space with a button. But at the same time, it's very simple. The charm comes from that. You're not worrying about, like, where's the dirt going? How much resistance will there be?

It just, you're kind of just floating in space in a way. Yeah, you can also tell you're digging because bluegrass music plays. Yeah, it's true. It's one of the earlier games with musical shoes. Like Mario Brothers, there's a few others. I mean, I think Donkey Kong probably started it. It has that, like, randomized element to the sound. so like Mario's walking always sounds a little different

and they can't perfectly recreate that but but yeah DigDug turns it into like a whole thing so the game's theme music only plays when DigDug or Tyso if you prefer his walking around Oh we're going to cover when they gave him a name and a family Yeah but yes He has a lot of trauma

This is still this is still 82 so we're still figuring things out And there's really nothing underground but monsters So there are no power-ups there are rocks that can crush the monsters but it's just like basically a joyless extermination mission and there's not even you know there's little flowers at the top

that's joyful what are they signified like how it's your progression okay but you don't even get like a fruit or a pretzel or a key it feels like some tiny element that's missing there are some fruit bonuses are there are yeah okay I just played it

quarter world last day maybe I didn't get to the fruit I thought there were fruit bonuses this is misinformation potentially Am I having like a Mandela effect here? Well here's the thing They remade DigDug about a billion times So at some point they could have introduced fruit Into his world

Because there's like Especially throughout the Otts When Mr. Driller came around There were like DigDug Revolution And there's like a DS DigDug And more things like that And also if we're talking about Dig Dug Where we're definitely going to talk to Mr. Doo

because Mr. Doo is very much like dig And Mr. Doo has fruit But Mr. Doo does not dig He do not dug Mr. Due has Passages he has to unveil on I would argue that Mr. Dew Diggs more than Digdug

Because Mr. Doo's weapon is a ball That bounces off those surfaces So when you move in Mr. Doo, you have to consider What kind of passages you're building And then throw your ball accordingly Whereas Dig Dug, no matter where you go You can still walk wherever you want

And you can still shoot out your little arrows and take care of the monsters And the monsters don't care if you dig or not So I would argue digging is actually more important in Mr. Doe that dig-dub? Well, Mr. Dew puts clowns where they belong underground. We don't need them. I mean, it's like the Pennywise origin story.

That's what he was doing before it. He was throwing a ball down tunnels. Collecting fruit. Yes, we'll talk about Mr. Do in a second. But, yeah, the way Dig-Dug works, if you haven't played it, you've got to play it. But you're tunneling through the dirt. Monsters can basically enter this phantom state and move towards you. They don't really need to dig.

Although, is that symbolic of them digging their own tunnels? that when they're just eyes appear and float towards you? I don't think so because they don't leave a passage behind them. They're just passing through. They've become one with the speed force and are vibrating their molecules so fast they pass through solid ground or something. It's very much like the twins and the Matrix 2,

those white guys of the dreads. Oh, if they were Puka and Figer, I would watch those films. That's one thing they can do. That's actually their names. The Merovingian and Puka and Figer. Okay, well, now I have to watch this movie. but you do have an advantage because your little nozzle can work its way through a certain amount of undug dirt so you don't really need to put yourself in a tunnel with every dangerous monster and I typically find arcade games pretty tough

they're designed to be very tough but dig dug is one of those games where I can play a very long time on one credit to the point where I get kind of bored so I do appreciate dig dug for being a value if you're looking to just get I don't know 10 15 minutes out of one quarter or 50 cents I feel the same way about Mario Brothers That feels like not so punishing that they're trying to rip you off. You're given enough gameplay for your credits. It's definitely one of the more generous games of the era. I feel like a Pac-Man or a Ms. Pac-Man,

I struggle to get more than maybe two mazes. But in Dig-Dug, I feel like at one coin I can comfortably get through five levels without any difficulty, and then, well, then the components comes down a lot. But still. Yeah, it's nice. And Dig-Dug is kind of everywhere. Wherever I go to an arcade with a lot of machines, it's always like point of Dig-Dug.

It's one of the classics. It's the, maybe the one game that in elevator action returns that I will always put money into it if I see it at an arcade. But, you know, you're much more likely to see DigDug than Elevator Action Returns. For sure. And yeah, because of how successful it was, because of how simple it is, but in an elegant way, DigDug has a ton of copycassing clones. Notably, Mr. Dew, we talked about this. Apparently, Mr. Doe released six months after DigDug. That's how quickly they are able to work.

and it's dig-dug meets Pac-Man because you have the digging mechanics of Dig-Dug and then you have a goal that involves collecting everything in the level to clear the level and monsters have ghost-like speed as they chase you down a tunnel so the monsters aren't always directly headed towards you

in Mr. Dew yeah and they can only go through the tunnels you've made for them I think later on when the monsters change some of them can dig that's what like Mr. Dew is that Mr. Dew makes no sense you can look at Dig-Dub's okay here's a guy

he's digging underground as monsters, you fight the monsters. All right, I understand it. Mr. Dew makes no sense. Why is the clown underground? Why is he fighting the balls? Why do the monsters change shape and properties so many times, depending on what you do? It's amazing.

And to tie back even further, the sequel, Mr. Dew's castle, is kind of load rudder-esque. And then you've got this vertical stage and you're going back and forth and monsters chased you. And instead of a shovel, you have a hammer. And that sort of knocks loose rungs in the ground and the monsters fall in the hole and can get stuck. So, yeah, both Mr. Dew and the immediate sequel,

Mr. Duke's Castle, are both reminiscent of classic video games. And they just had a clown, which is kind of horrible in our modern parlance. But as a child, I was like, okay, I'm on board. Let's bring this full circle. Mr. Dew was developed by Universal, the space panic people. So once again, it comes back to Hayankio Alien.

Yes, very good. And also, Mr. Doe, I guess the one advantage he has, is that he kills enemies in a humane way with his clown ball. Dig-Dug kills them horribly in a way. I think we had to stop making Dig-Dug games because graphics got too advanced to pick their death by inflation. I mean, it definitely activated some people. There are inflation fetishists that were like,

oh, this is something. I like this. What if Dig-Dug inflated me? Exactly, yeah. I love the Pookas. I don't know why I don't mind exploding them. They don't seem to mind either. They're, like, dumber than Gumbas, I think, potentially. And this, the Fragars seem dangerous.

Because they, you know, they launch their flingbreadth at you. The Pupas just kind of just march around. I will give them credit for the fact that when there's only one enemy left, that last enemy is like, oh shit, I got to get out of here. And they beeline for the exit. Yeah, I mean, that makes the monsters more sensible than, like, say, the henchmen in most, you know, like Chuck Norris or John Lickmoor. Yeah, it makes you feel kind of bad.

You're like, wow, I got to chase this guy down. He's trying to escape, but I got to blow him up. It turns Yeah, it puts a different spin on Mr. Tyso-Hory Yeah, I guess there's no power pellet But when the level's about to end The tables turn And you have to chase the monster away

So I want to say Diamond Jeremy might be slightly too old for this But this game could be famous to a lot of people Because it is a element in the background Of the Max on the show Saved by the Bell So the Max is the restaurant all the kids ate at Every shot of it There is a Mr. Doe Machine

prominently featured in the background. And I think it's because this was an NBC show and that is a universal arcade cabinet. I think I just put these things together in my head right now. It's a different universal actually. Different universal entirely? Yeah, this is confusing. Yeah. It's not universal like the American corporation.

It's UPL. Maybe somebody on the set was like, I think we have the rights to this. That would explain it. Yeah. I mean, they couldn't get the Donkey Kong lawsuit, so they settled for just stealing Mr. Doo. So different universal. So I think the actual universal sued them. and say, hey, wait a minute.

I have no idea. But yes, all right. Well, if you have seen Save By the Bell, you know Mr. Doe. I don't think I ever played Mr. Doe in the wild, actually. I think I might have just emulated it. But it wasn't really around for me. Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen a Mr. Doe arcade cabinet in person. I've only seen them at things like this.

There might be one here. Yeah. Or Midwest Gaming Club. There's not one here this year, no. I will eventually get to it when I start covering the Tomi Puta because there was a port of Mr. Dew to Tomi Puta. So that's on my right. radar someday. That sounds pretty vulgar to me.

Yeah, it kind of is. Okay, so what is this? Tomiputa? It's a console computer hybrid. It's basically a TI-99 4A that was released mostly in Japan but also had a U.S. version. I don't think Mr. Doe came to the, it was the Tomi Tudor here

but in Japan it was the Tomi Puta. So you know, like computer, but there's a pun in the kanji that means like, I can't remember what it is learning or something like that. Anyway, it's P-Y-U-U-U-T-A. I see.

But there is a Mr. Doe clone, or no, there's a Mr. Doe port and then also a clone of Mr. Doe in Dig Dog called Mystery Gold. So they were kind of doubling down, digging in. So that is the story of DigDug. We're going to move on. We're not going in chronological order, but I do want to cover Mr. Driller next because it makes logical sense.

This is the spiritual successor to DigDug. It takes the digging idea and adapts it into this candy-colored puzzle game. Although this always existed as a very niche title in the giant shadow of DigDug. Namco really wanted to make this one of their pillars right before they were purchased by Bondi, but it is only for dorks like us. These games are extremely unpopular, unfortunately. I mean, my favorite anecdote about, maybe not my favorite anecdote,

but one of my favorite just like illustrations of how poorly it's gone over here is that Dreamcast was huge for a certain set of people. people. And Dreamcast was huge for that group of people in part because of Soul Blade, or not Soul Blade, Soul Calibur, which Namco created was an amazing game, fantastic port. People were like, what's coming next from Namco for Dreamcast? The only other game Namco put on Dreamcast was Mr. Driller. And everyone who was into Soul Calibur was like, what in God's name is this? This is stupid. I hate this. And it started as an arcade game, right? I mean, that flew in Japan, but that is not what people wanted to play in arcades in the late 90s. No, back when the Metrion in San Francisco had its arcade, you could find Mr. Driller games there. So, you know, they tried to get it here. But it wasn't until I played it on PlayStation with someone else's house a few years after it came out that I was like, oh, this is actually really good.

It kind of, it takes a little while to kind of get into. But it's basically, what if we took the dig-dug mechanic and put it in Puyo Puyo. And, you know, everything was about falling objects and creating large blobs and chain reactions. And suddenly it were simultaneously a puzzle game and also an action survival game. Yeah, because unlike Dig-Dug, you have to get oxygen as you're digging through the tunnels. And you can get crushed by the rock just like Dig-Dug. So there are more dangers, more things to keep in mind. Unfortunately, I associate Mr. Driller with a very bad time in my life because just got out of college before grad school and I was temping in a job and the business was acquired by another business so they didn't bother training me because I was just essentially a seat filler. This is like capitalism, everybody. You are hired to just make your business seems like it's functioning when it's really not. So I was like, what do I do? When I wasn't reading books on Gutenberg.org on my computer and my cubicle, I was playing the feature phone version of Mr. Driller on my foot phone.

That's a really bad way to play it, too. Yes. I played about 100 hours of Mr. Driller via the future phone version. As I was working in the basement of a purchased bank. Gosh. Not really knowing what my job was. Yeah. But I was making $10 an hour, which was a lot in 2007 for that period, that portion of the world.

So, yeah, I have bad Mr. Driller experiences. But, yes, Mr. Driller, we talked about this. Dig Dug's family got very complicated in the early odds because Mr. Diller is the son of Digdug, who is now Taiso Hori, which is a Japanese pun, which means I'm going to dig. What is Taiso Hori? Hori, I don't know the kanji match stuff,

but Hori in general is a form of the verb to dig. So, the last name is appropriate. Hori, Thai, yeah, Hori Thai, yeah, so like Shidi Tai or Nomi Tile, like, I want to do something. So Hori Tai, I want to date. And then Zoh is just so this enthusiastic, like, sit and sender.

So, yeah, if you sit in general, take it's Hori Taizzo. It's like, yeah, let's dig. Let's dig. Let's start digging. Yeah, and these names are not given any Phoenix Wright style localizations. No, it's brought them over. It's Taizzo, Susamu, Ataru. And I mentioned that this is right before the Bandai buyout of Namco. And it feels like they were trying to get so many creative things off the ground before that happened, because this is right when also Katamari Damasi is taking off. So this feels like the last burst of the classic Namco we knew. And unfortunately,

It just resulted in a bunch of niche titles that we really like, but most people don't. Although there is a new Katamari coming out very soon. That surprised me. I think one came out and one's also coming out still. This is a very big year for Katamari. Yeah, weird. I guess it's some anniversary. No?

No, it's not that. It's a 22nd anniversary. Right. Good time. Might as well celebrate. But yes, we covered all of this in episode 107, the dig-dug Mr. Driller multiverse. So if you want to go back to like 2016, we broke down the entire family tree. Yes. Who's the dog? Is the dog in your character? He's poachy. Pochi from anything? No, he's just the family pet. And the mom is from Baradu? Yes, yes, Kissy. She never is, she's not playable. But she's divorced from Taiso. They got married and then they broke up. And Taiso's a little broken up about that. I think Kissy only shows up in the parade in Mr. Drillor Drilland, which, by the way, you can get on Switch now and you absolutely should because it's a masterpiece of a game.

And then you can't forget about Horinga Z, the robot, who's like easy mode, because if something falls on him, then he detaches his upper body from his lower body. His lower body turns into like a support structure. And then he just continues digging as like half a robot. Is that only in drill land or is this in other versions of the game? No, he showed up, here I go. I believe he showed up in Mr. Driller G for the first time. Okay, yeah.

Mr. Driller, too, I think you could play as Susumu or Anna, the rival driller from the West. And then in Mr. Driller G, you got all the family members like Ataru and Pochi and Horanguzzi and Taizzo and so forth. And then they all carried into Drilland. Yeah, you mentioned Drilland. This is a GameCube game that went unreleased in the USA for nearly 20 years. You talked it up a lot in early Retronauts, Jeremy, as an import. And now, yeah, it is available on Switch. It's regularly on sale for like $2.

most of the time and it is like the culmination of all Mr. Driller ideas and also all Namco ideas because there's like a Tower of Duraga mode

in there and an Indiana Jones mode and a bunch of other stuff yeah it's really cool haunted house mode but it is I think really the last iteration of Mr. Driller

before Bandai came in and shut everything down they made a few others there was drill till you drop for DSIware I think and I think there was one that showed up on Xbox Live that was just kind of a

you know, repackaging, but drill land is kind of the culmination of it. And it takes the drilling concept and does different things with it. So there's some modes where you're not worried about oxygen. Like the Drauga mode, you're drilling, and you do stop to worry about things falling in cascades, but you don't have to worry about oxygen. Instead, you're like drilling for gyms that you can use as abilities that will give you like extra strength and things like that. You have to eventually make it down and fight a dragon. There's a haunted house mode where you don't have to worry about oxygen, but there's like vampires around and you have to get holy water.

And you have to be careful because sometimes you'll break something and then vampire baths will come out and attack you. It's just they really take that concept of the puzzle drilling and do something more with it. It's very creative as a really good soundtrack, too, a very eclectic soundtrack. Again, fitting in with the cut. of Mari-Domacy era of Namco. And I'm glad you brought up DSI-Ware. Have we done an episode on that?

No, we should. We have to ask the question, do those games exist? Are they real? They don't. They don't. They don't exist. I have my DSI with one,

I think, Picto bits downloaded on it, and that's it. I have, like, five DSI-Ware games, I think. Yeah, so they do exist. They're on my 3DS. You have to track down Jeremy to play them. We need that channel on the Switch, too. Like, DSI-Ware?

I don't know. So, yes, that was Mr. Diller. We're going to be able to see. I'm going to see. We're going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to go. I'm going to.

I'm going to. I'm going to. And so. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to

I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm We're going to move on to a with a really great digging-based mechanic

but the game is not based around digging. It's Super Mario Brothers 2. By the way, folks, here, trivia. Has everybody heard this? Not actual Super Mario Brothers 2. This is a game called Dokey-Dokey Panic. Whoa. I thought it was called Super Mario Brothers USA. It's also called that.

Oh, that's confusing. This is the most common fact you learn when you start playing retro games and getting into the retro gaming scene. But yes, we're talking about the American Mario 2, not the lost levels, et cetera, et cetera. So, yes, this is not a digging-based game. But because there aren't any swimming levels,

you are tunneling through dirt in a nice diversion from the typical side-scrolling gameplay and it is a logical extension of what you're doing in Mario 2 because you're pulling things out of the ground and that is applied to digging by you're pulling the ground up from beneath you and creating a hole and so on and so on. So they're finding ways to play with the tools

that they have already implemented in the game, which is very nice. Yeah, we made jokes earlier about how swimming changes everything and some of this makes it worse. But yeah, Super Mario 2 is a great example. It's like, no, you've already, by the time you get to a stage with dirt, you've already pressed the B button like 100 times, and you've picked up flowers or vegetables or the enemies. And now you get the scenario where you are descending at your own speed, but any enemies that might follow you also necessarily fall in the holes you make. So it creates this really interesting situation where you want to keep going, but you also have to keep moving, otherwise enemies would just fall in your head.

yeah they are they're zigzagging their way towards you as you're finding a way to move straight down and yeah like you're right diamond when you get to this point in the game you're not taught what to do but instinctively you know what to do you don't turn off the system and start weeping you're like okay i can i can pull things up what if i pull the ground up i think the first time you encounter digging you can actually see shy guys walking around beneath you so it does indicate there you can go down there's something going yeah it might even be i i can't remember i don't quote me on this, but I think, you know, there are some places where you can drop down, and so, like, the idea of stratification becomes evident. And there aren't many of these segments in the game. I forgot how many there were,

but I scanned through a long plan. I was like, oh, there's basically, like, maybe three, maybe four of these. Mostly in the desert stages, but I think there's one in one of the waterfall stages, too. Yeah, they throw that in as, like, kind of a surprise. But it's basically, like, your reward for picking Toad all the time, because he's awesome, and he's the best at digging. And some of them, at least one of them, they have have the gimmick where if you collect cherries strategically, you get the Starman, so when you go back up, you don't have to worry about where the enemies are going because you can just blast through them. It's really cool. But yeah, I thought there were a lot more of these

than, but again, it's probably like 90 seconds to two minutes of this game is this digging mechanic, but it's very creative and it's very satisfying. And this is you altering the terrain in a way that is very fun. I like this one. And also with the stratification, that also makes it's more challenging to do with enemies because you can't just ride them because if you jump, you're just going to go up a level. So you have to be very careful. If you actually want to get your enemy or pick up an enemy, you have to very carefully position yourself on a hole you've already dug and wait for them to come into the hole and then sort of step onto them. It's really, you can't just jump on them because you won't land. Yeah, and it's, it makes you kind of have

to think about how you're digging because, you know, there's a lot of them where shy guys are patrolling and you have to kind of create this sort of zigzaggy pattern because it's again you can't just jump on them easily so it's really difficult to pick them up and there may not be another enemy to throw it at if you you know throw an enemy while you're in the dirt they'll just immediately land and then bump into your head so you don't want that so you have to kind of kite them and create you know ways to evade them you can kind of trap them although it takes more time to do that than just evade them yeah and forget the sniffets would jump and fire fire bullets yeah so like once you see one they essentially start heading towards you

because they just jump automatically and they'll be going up as you're trying to go down and you're going to space it out. Yeah, you have to time it. So yeah, like I said, they could have done more of the idea, but I like that. It's just introduced long enough

for it to be a novel diversion from what you're normally doing in the game. It's just part of the game's general sense of here's a bunch of fun gameplay concepts we're going to just not linger on one for too long. I feel like that's very much in the Mario ethos. Like, here's a fun idea. We're going to do something with it.

it, and then it's going to show up again later, maybe one more time after that, but we're not going to drive in into the ground, as it were. It's the touch-fuzzy get-dizzy principle. Yeah, or the Corabo shoe, yeah. Nintendo's, I think, really good. The Mario team is really good about that. You know, you get the flying on albatrosses in Mario 2 is also like that. There's a couple of places where you have to fly on a bird,

but there's only one where you really have to, like, master that, and then you're done with it. It makes them memorable. Yeah, if there was just one entire world where all you did was dig, would be annoying. And you wouldn't want to do that. But here, it's applied very gracefully and it's pretty rare. So that is Super Mario Brothers 2. We're going to move on to Earthworm Jim 2 for another game with a notable digging level. Now, how familiar are we with this? Jeremy shaking his head. Diamond? All I know is the guy doesn't like you. Oh, well, Doug Tanapel

doesn't like a lot of people. Yes. And as a straight white male, he should love me. But I'm not Christian, so I guess that's the real downfall of Bob Mackey. So despite his brain problems, he is a great artist, and Earthworm Jim is a great character. And this game, like many Earthworm Jim games, they really can't decide on

a gameplay style. This is what I call the Battletoads principle, where it's like, why don't we make one good game? It's like, no, we'll make a game where three levels are good, and every other level is some new idea that's not fully fleshed out. And that is the story of Earthworm Jim in general. Yeah, and it's different from the way Nintendo will throw in like new ideas and novel concepts because it doesn't feel like those take over

the game. I guess maybe Mario Wonder does, but it's really just like here is something that is part of the sandbox that's, you know, kind of a natural evolution of how the game works, whereas the, you know, the earthworm gym thing is like, hey, now we're going to have a total genre shift or now this game is going to work in an entirely different way and you have to master something new, and that's all you're going to do for the next 20 minutes. Yeah, I guess, like, there are some highlights in these games, but then the low lights are very low, and often very difficult.

There's funny stuff, like, you know, launching a cow, or you get into the stage called Heck, and it starts with music as the night on Bald Mountain, but then it turns into elevator music. You know, there's some funny stuff in the games. It's just, I don't feel like they all hung together that well, which is why I've never played the second one. I played the first one and said, you know, I'm good. I've had enough.

I couldn't get past the level where you have to steer the very fragile submarines around, and that's level three. Eventually, going back with passwords, yeah, I played more of the game. But, yeah, this game, it's very uneven. The puppy bouncing levels can go to hell. There are these levels where you're like, it's sort of like the, what is the Game and Watch game, Jeremy Fireman, where you're bouncing people off of trampolines as they're jumping.

That's essentially what these puppy levels are. Puppies are being thrown out of windows. you're bouncing them on a giant marshmallow. And this is a substantial chunk of the game. And it gets very hard, very fast. But the level I'm talking about today is called Lorenzen's soil. So eventually with later releases of Earthworm Jim 2, they were able to call it Lorenzo's soil.

A reference to the movie, Lorenzo's Oil, which has nothing to do with digging. It's about a cure for cancer, right? I swear to God. I would say, it's Earthroom Jim 2 and the critic are the only reasons anyone might think about Lorenzo's oil in the 21st century. And there's also that...

I think you're giving too much credit to Earthworm Jim, too, there. I could be thinking of the movie Medicine Man. Is Lorenzo's Oil also the same idea? It's like, I found the cure for cancer, but I lost it. You know, I never saw it. It was a little more of a serious kind of adult drama than I wanted to see as a 14-year-old. Lorenzo's oil, about some kind of magic oil, let's say.

It has nothing to do with Orrform Jim, but this is a very soothing level where you dig up, stupid, with Jim's electro gun. So it's built around this really impressive technical trick. where when you tunnel upwards, the dirt falls and accumulates at Jim's feet, which elevates him. This is not in the DOS port, I'm guessing, because they couldn't figure out how to make this work, the people making that port. But apparently, reading into this, it is a very technically interesting way all of this comes together.

And it does remind me of what's going on in like Donkey Kong Bonanza, where the things you dig are accumulating under you. So there is some level of physics at work. And, again, a lot of this Earthworm Jim stuff is building levels and ideas around these technical tricks. But ultimately, some of them aren't fun. one is fun. I find this one to be very satisfying. It's super light on enemies, and they realize that combat should not be a major focus in this. So, and it's got like, um, the, the weird kind of Euro beat, dancey, earthworm gym music that doesn't really fit the level, but it's still

kind of soothing too. I mean, I have, it sounds better than most of Earthward gyms that I've played. You know, I think this sounds better than running around and whipping things with the worm tail. This is the level I would go back to if I wanted to play. earthworm gym just because it is it's a fun like eight minute diversion although like a lot of earthworm gym levels it ends with a very awkward boss fight uh where it's like oh the boss fight idea is zaney it's a maggot on a unicycle but is essentially he's just riding back and forth in one room off and going off screen and you just have to tank him and to beat him and that's it so yeah uh i mean a lot of these games do feel like like teenagers sat down and

filled up a notebook and they had to make the ideas that were in that notebook but just probably not wrong yeah that's that was the era of game design Yeah, and I'm sure these guys were all in their early 20s at this point, so basically teenagers. But yeah, I wanted to call this out because you can't really praise Earthworm Jim for a lot of stuff, but I like this in particular. So now we are moving on to talk about Mole Mania from 1996. So this is a very well-crafted action puzzle game,

inexplicably produced by Shigeru Miyamoto while he was making Mario 64 and Zelda at the same time. And I assume, like, he maybe worked on this while he was hospitalized. Well, I mean, he was the producer on it, so he wasn't actually, like, sitting down. designing it. It was developed by Pax Softnika, who had a lot of contract work for Nintendo on Game Boy. I think they also did the, they handled Donkey Kong 94. So, you know, it's kind of part of that whole oove of Miyamoto and Pax Softnika working together to make great things on the portable.

Yeah, I saw that it had another developer, but I'm just wondering how hands-on he was, because he is busy trying to establish what 3D gameplay should be in two different genres. And I'm wondering, like, is he also sitting down and driving? drawing mole mania levels. This might have been him blowing off steam. Yeah, it could be. I need something simple. I got to think in 2D for a little while.

I mean, do those... Do Mars 64 and Zelda have any digging in them? I don't think so. Hmm. Not really. I mean, I don't even think O'Coreen of Time has a shovel. There's some of the seeds. You get seeds to fill in those little holes,

but I don't think you're... Yeah, you don't dig. There's lots of holes in the overall. Isn't there like something to do with moving sand around in the pyramid stage of Mario 64? It's been a long time since I've played. I don't... I mean, there could be,

but I don't think it involves digging. So maybe he was getting his digging vibes out in this game. I think they were saving it for Switch. They're not going to dig until we get to... Bonanza? Yeah, well, not Bonanza, Tears of the Kingdom. Yes, we need the technology first before we're going to dig. So are we familiar with this?

Because this game is awesome. I've played it, yeah, it's been a while. I think most people did not play it until it was re-released on the 3DS. And I'm pretty sure, is it on Switch now? Is it on the Game Boy Collection on Switch or not yet? I might have played it there. NSO. I can't remember it. It's been I haven't actually messed with Ineso that

much. But it is very available and this is one of those games that came out right before Pokemon rejuvenated, the Game Boy Advance. So on some releases of this I've seen, there's a sticker on that says new game just to let people know. It's like Waryoland too also has that, the monochrome

version. This is not a game from 1989 we put back on the shell. It's 1996 you voted for Bill Clinton and now you can play Mulmania. Or hey, Bob Dole. You know, either one is fine. as long as you're playing woolmania. This was a period where Game Boy was still profitable

and Nintendo was still selling it but no one was making games for it and so you would go to major retailers, you'd go to the mall in West Texas or someplace, Michigan and you would find import games. They would like just bring over

Japanese releases that required very little reading because there was no region lock and they needed something to sell. Yeah, I recall a lot of games being marked down too. I was able to clean up a lot of older games at this time period. I don't know how much that space shrunk before it expanded again. I wish I could go

back and see just how small a gameway section got before Pokemon came out and made it like the system seller. But yeah, this is a little tricky because there's a lot going on here, but again, it's very elegantly executed. So there's above ground and underground gameplay. This is like the good version of

Dig-Dug for the DS, which I'm not a fan of. Are you talking about, oh, digging strike? That's really based on Dig-Dug 2, which is not about digging so much as basically tectonic activity like breaking breaking away California to float away

I hate DigDug 2 and I really want to like it It's not that good Yes I mean just in terms of There being above ground and underground gameplay Where one element That I really like And I wish I like that digging strike game But it involves like I hate being above ground

When I'm in DigDug 1 world I'm fine Above Ground not great Not doing great But in this game You're basically defenseless underground and you switch to one level when traversal on the other is impossible. So can't really do anything underground. Most enemies can't get down there.

And a lot of your action happens on the surface level, and it's your standard, like, Lolo, Sokabon-style block shoving. Although this guy, this mole, this Papa mole, is much more able than the Sokabon guy because he can suplex things behind his back or kick things at enemies. So he actually is very versatile than Lolo or Sokaband Man. I mean, I'm more versatile than Sokoban,

man. I can pull a box. I have pulled boxes before. I have master pulling, but I have not suplexed items behind me. No, I mean, that's impressive. Yeah. So, yes, it's very elegantly designed, and it, like, adds new wrinkles as you progress. So there's different enemy types, different overalled objects that all complicate your mission to save your children and collect a whole bunch of cabbages. And there are even boss fights that play well with these mechanics, mostly the suplexing and kicking balls and going underground to avoid things.

So, again, most people never played this in 90s. but it is very available now and very cool and like with DigDug it's all about digging it's all about digging and the overall mechanic hooks up so elegantly to the underworld mechanic it's so great and you mentioned Donkey Kong 94 Jeremy this does remind me a lot of that

even though they both play very differently and I was talking with my wife about this but it feels like Japan has a lot more mole-focused media than we do in America and I'm trying to figure out why I mean there's Moogles there's Moogles yes they're mole-back that and Japan invented whack a mole. So they were pioneers in mole-based violence. So I think

mole mania is trying to say, we're sorry for all of that, you're going to save moles, you're going to be a mole, you're going to see the pain of being a mole. I don't know why. I mean, there are moles in America. I've seen moles growing up, but for whatever reason, the UK and Japan, they're very like into moles. Yeah, it's one of those things where it's just like a certain kind of creature and certain lore around it becomes more popular. Like, there's all kinds of Japanese media and especially games where mice throw bombs and that's not something I've seen in any other

cultures. And they wear cool sunglasses. Sometimes yeah, sometimes. Have you figured out if that's a pun yet? I don't know. Okay. Diamond, is that something you can shed light on to? No, I know, you know, Nizumi is mouse in Japanese, but that doesn't sound like an explosion or something like that. As far as the mole thing, I just

I think it might be a cutest thing. They're pretty cute. They're cute, yeah. You know, if you jazz them a little bit, You know, I feel like moles and copybottos are very similar, you know, in that sense. Like, they're just cute to look at and don't worry about what they actually do in their lives. No, it's a cute little guy. Yeah, they're weird little critters. So I have what I call here an honor a mole mention, everybody.

So this is the mole from Little Nemo the Dream Master. So he can only tunnel, but he's a cool dude with sunglasses and a hard hat. So the mole in that game, you climb into its body. It's very gross. But it's sort of like the mole in this game when it's underground. It can only dig. there is no other actions you can really do. And don't forget that Yoshi can transform

into a mole vehicle in Yoshi's Island. Yeah. And it's same thing. It's like you're not doing anything except for digging and it's all about finding the ideal route. So what are you picking up when you're the mall? Are you picking up like, you're picking up something when you're doing those mole segments? It's just, oh, man.

Wow, I'm going to see an island. It's mostly commercial, right? Yeah. You're trying to get to like, yeah, you're basically trying to get from one point to another and you have to hit a goal. Yeah. And then that will transfer Yoshi to that point.

Right. Otherwise, you'll flip back and have to try digging again. Everyone's screaming at their podcast devices now. But I'm pretty sure you were activating more mole power-ups to stay in mole form. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like chaining them along. Yeah. Don't scream at me.

I'm old and senile. Be kind. I only remember so many mole facts. So, yeah, that is Molomania. Very recommended. It embodies all of these digging things you're talking about. And now we're going to move on to some newer stuff. By newer, I mean almost 20 years old, because I want to talk about Spolunky.

So this is old enough to cover here. It started in 2008. Wow. So 2008 is when the freeware version came out. And then 2012, there was a retail release, so it is old. And we have not mentioned Spalunker, and that's a very good reason. That's because nature has dug those caves for you. You are not doing any digging.

But Spolunky adds a digging element to Spelunker, and it makes it a lot more fair, even if it is very hard, this game. Well, yeah, Spelunky is difficult in a way that makes you say, ooh, I could have done better. I know what I did there. That was a mistake, whereas Spelunker is hard in a way that's like, oh, this game is really limited and annoying. Yes, I fell four inches and not three

I'm dead. My legs have snapped off. Yeah, I will never forget the time when I was at Tokyo Game Show and there was a PS3 remake of Spalunker that they were promoting and I went up to the kiosk to demo it and

like wiped myself out in about 15 seconds and the woman watching the kiosk was like I could just tell she was so sad and disappointed for me. Wasn't she used to seeing that all day? Well, it was at the very beginning of the show, the media day. It was one of the first things that I did. And I could just

like feel the disappointment and scorn radiating from her. I mean, I think she realized what her weekend was going to be. Watching people just hit the pressure. It was like she saw the future flash before her eyes. Jeez. Talk about activation. That's got to be someone's fetish, right? To go to TGS

and just humiliate yourself for the booth lady? Spalunker humiliation kink. Are we discovering this today? Well, Spalunky, the point of this game, much like Mr. Driller, make it to the bottom every stage, but you don't have to dig, you should be digging to avoid enemies.

And digging is mostly, I mean, there is a shovel in this game, but you're mostly laying out bombs, and you're doing this to get enemies, set up traps, grab treasure. And because everything in the game is very reactive, it's mostly about setting up these very fun chain reactions, even if they're unintentional. So, like, a misthrown bomb will activate an enemy

that flies into something else, that flies into something else, and then that can either screw you over, or give you a much clearer path to the bottom. It is a very fun game in that respect, but also very, very difficult. And not much to say on this one, so it's riffing on retro games, but it is latching onto the roguelite idea

before that was everyone's go-to. So in 2008, this is novel. The fact that you're starting a game and things are different than the level every time, that was, like, for a lot of people, a new idea. This might have been the first game that had the roguelike element of death and retry and make slow progression

and randomization. that people didn't hate, at least in the U.S. Yeah. I think this is, this and a few other things got people into the idea of, like, what if I did start over and it was fine? Like, what if I wasn't mad about that? And, yeah, that is Spolunky. Honorable mention, not Honorable Mention, by the way.

That was the last game. Rair's Digger T. Rock from 1990 is a worse version of this. Maybe I'm being unfair, but I think most people would agree. Any experience with Digger T. Rock? Do we know what this is? No, I always get that confused with, Boulder Dash, yeah, they are a difference. Digger T. Rock is more of an action game with digging,

and it's a lot like Wizards and Warriors in terms of how it looks and moves. I mean, it's rare. Yeah, it's definitely... That scans. There are two iterations of Rare. There's like the Battletoads iteration, and then there's the Wizard of Warriors iteration. Well, there's also the Game Tech game show iteration, but we don't talk about that. No, I don't want to talk about that.

But, yeah, Digger T. Rock is being mentioned here. And I think we're going to end up here with the SteamWorld series, So, which weirdly enough didn't start with digging. I didn't know this. We brought up TSIware. That's where it began with SteamWorld Tower Defense, which I did not know. Oh, I was not aware of that one. Yeah. Before Steamroll Dig, 2010 gave us this lost DSIware game.

So, and not every Steamroll game is about digging, but obviously the best of SteamWorld is digging with SteamWorld dig. And we all love this, right? Oh, yeah. I play this one a lot. Yes. That's definitely one where, yeah, navigation is key. and making, you know, you've got choices to make

and you've got to figure out what the best roots are, but you also want to go back and try to find more things you might have missed. And so it's not a rogue light because you're not dying every time, but you are going through the same area

as more than once. So you sort of get familiar with it and try to figure out what you may have missed before or maybe get new power. It's like, oh, how can I use this to explore an area I've already explored before? And I think are there random elements

or is it a design game? It's a design. the game. Yeah. But because you choose how you dig, essentially your game becomes your own. Yeah, yeah. Because you're going to make choices that I didn't make and vice versa. Yeah, it's like a very satisfying loop where you dig a little, you get resources,

you bring them back up, you build up the town, which gives you more resources to keep digging and so on and so on. And both of these games are great. Both of them do not, I'll say they're welcome. It's like the perfect amount of length for what you're doing here. You never really get bored. And, yeah, the loop is great. on this. Yeah, it taps

into the same dynamic, the same design concept and gameplay flow as something like Etrian Odyssey where you're going into the dungeon, in this case, you know, you're digging down into the earth, and you can only go so far at the beginning, but every time you venture out, you

gain things, resources, experience, whatever, that's going to strengthen you and allow you to go further out next time. And with each iteration, you're able to tackle more, you know, more difficult challenges. You gain the ability to climb and to jump better. It just, yeah, it's got that very satisfying RPG loop to it. And it's, it was a, it was a great surprise. Like, I played that

when it very first came out on 3DS, just out of morbid curiosity knowing nothing whatsoever about it. There hadn't been any press about it. And I devoured it in like a day because it was just this incredibly fun, compelling, bite-sized game that came out of nowhere. And I'm happy to have seen Steamworld, you know, expand and grow and turn into other things that I'm not interested in. Yeah. But, you know, it's great that it has legs. The platform has something for everybody, the Steam World platform, because there's like a turn-based tactical shooter. There's two of those.

There's a card-based RPG. There's a city-building sim. And they did another dig in 2017, which is really good. It adds just enough. I feel like there's nothing really left to do with that idea. kind of want to see another one because it feels like thanks to corporate mergers, this whole platform might be dead and buried, no pun intended, because they were acquired, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you know how it goes. They're never good for anyone, but they were able to

make what they wanted in this world, iterate on it several times in like over the course of 12 years, so not bad. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like enough time is past that there are probably some fresh ideas to bring to the Steamworld dig concept, but yeah, I don't know if there's anyone actively developing it anymore. I mean, we said at the top, right? Steam rolled swim. Yeah, yeah. What if it was ice?

You could dig through the ice. Sure, why not? Yeah, I want to see more from this. And I like when people get to do their own thing on their own terms, but this series might not be around for marriage longer. And then, to wrap up here, I reached out on Blue Sky. I asked people, what are games that involve digging? And they fill in a lot of the lengths here.

So thank you to everybody for responding. So I'll just go over some of these here And we can talk a tiny bit about them So apparently, Legend of Zelda, the Minish Cap has these things called Molmits That let you tunnel through clod-like terrain So it's really just lock and key kind of thing It's like there's this kind of terrain

You basically get it out of the way with the mullmits But they're cool, they're cool looking And I guess like I have never played through this Because I find too many of the items Are basically like lock and key kind of things Although other Zelda games disguise that better It feels a little more explicit in Minish cap I don't know.

It could just be me. Any Minish Cap feelings before we move on? It's fine. It's a flagship title in the Zelda series, and it's very much in line with the other flagship games. So we also have Lemmings. So Lemmings features three kinds of lemming classes that dig in different ways. So the digger class dig straight down,

and then we have some variance on that. So the basher digs a horizontal path, and the fencer digs horizontal slopes. This leads me to ask, is Lemmings digging-based? Because it is about altering and building terrain to achieve a goal. Unfortunately, I suck at this. Yeah. And I've never been good at Lemmings, but it does feel like it is bordering on being a digging game to me.

I think it's situationally digging based. I think it depends on the stage. Not every stage requires you to do that. But there are a lot that do. So it's a key mechanic, for sure. Most of like worms. Worms are also like, like, that's not a game about digging, but you might have to

dig away the terrain to reach enemies and hard to fight places. Yeah, I mean, I watched the Game Center CX challenge for Lemmings and it feels like the big cheat of Lemmings is you use the blocker to hold back most of the lemmings until you send two out to figure out the rest of the level and then you release the blocker and then they all move. So it kind of ruins the magic of the game for me.

Which works until you get to a stage where you're not allowed to lose any lemmings because you can't turn a blocker into something else. Once it's a blocker, it's a blocker. Yeah. So you have to destroy that blocker. And if you do that, then, you know, in the 100% completion stages, that's no go. And I guess lemmings probably dig in the wild, I don't know.

When they're not being scared off of clips by Disney documentarians? I don't know. They might do some digging. I feel like between this and the talk of, what was it, digger tea crew? Digger T. Rock. You're thinking of King K. Rule. Yeah. These two elements alone have probably gotten Stewart very, very agitated.

I think he's really mad at us for the rare slander. we pissed all over Boulder Dash Sorry, Boulder Dash Is Boulder Dash even a UK? I think it's a UK It is, yeah Yeah, yeah

Well, Stuart isn't here, is he? So we're going to move on So we did Lemmings And these are older games now But of course, Minecraft And Terraria And all of their clones They're all about digging

You go underground, you find everything Jack Black is there He's kind of annoying You have some fondness For what he did in the past But he's doing it again et cetera, et cetera. But we're too old for Minecraft.

I have played many, many hours of Minecraft. So I think one of the important rules of Minecraft is that you don't drink, you don't dig straight down. Yeah, yeah. Because you don't know what's there. And if you fall, you could lose everything. But yeah, I think that's one of the strong skills of Minecraft. The fact that you begin on this sort of top layer,

you've no idea where you are or what could be out there. And you can dig essentially anywhere. You know, some materials require tools to break them up, but most materials don't, and you can just punch your way and punch your way through a mountain. And what's inside the mountain? It might just be more mountain, or it might be an empty cavern full of treasure chest, or it might be like some, you know, uncommon jewel, you know, uncommon, like geodes or whatever. So I do really enjoy Minecraft that it very much is about digging, but it's also about farming and it's also about building. So it's kind of an everything game. Yeah, I played a little bit of it when it was in Alpha or Beta.

It was 2010, and there was absolutely no guidance in the game. So all I did was dig. I didn't know how to build anything. I just knew how to dig up the blocks and then kind of fashion them into a house that would later get exploded. So not a lot of great experience with Minecraft, but I know it is very formative for people, especially as Minecraft gets older.

And other mentions, we called out the Mole Tank in Yoshis Island. Of course, it has cool little sunglasses. And in Dungeon Keeper and Dungeon Keeper 2, the great Bullfrog Sim games, you were essentially digging out the earth to build your base. So digging is a central mechanic in Dungeon Keeper, and I love those games. Yeah, I guess the one that I threw in the notes, Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman. What did I do to deserve this?

It's very much in the dungeon keeper vein. So maybe that's just kind of like a subcategory. But that is very much kind of going back into the DigDug retro vibe. And taking it more, yeah, it's in the side notes. Giving, giving that kind of approach a dungeon keepery sort of vibe resource hunting and that sort of thing and, you know, pixel art, et cetera, et cetera. So, I hadn't thought about that game in a long time and then it just popped into my brain this morning. It's great that you can just pull that title out of your brain immediately. I had to look it up.

Okay, thank you. But it did, it stuck with me because it's legally, legally fraught. Yeah, yeah. So I guess the Japanese title is What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord? But they decided to roll with it. Oh, okay, that's what they eventually moved it to because it was too close to Batman. Yeah, Warner had issues with the original title. So they retitled it to What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord.

Yeah, I don't know if the Batman 66 reference was what PSP gamers were looking for. So it could have been a good idea. It was a weird localization choice. But I think it does have, it was going for that tongue-and-cheek quality that the Japanese version has. It was meant to be kind of like a riff on classic games very much in like the sort of Game Center CX, you know, Game Center Retro Game Challenge vibe where it's sort of recreating classic games but also being kind of punchy and cheeky about it. Interesting. Yeah, I never played these and there's more than one of them. Yeah, it has a really great class-based system for the

monsters that you create. Like you start out creating slimes and then as you advance through levels, you can create more powerful versions of them and new kinds of monsters. It was a fun game. I really enjoyed it. I never really played the sequels, though. I mean, you can't knock on the title. The title is memorable.

I've never actually played these games, but I sure as hell saw them on the shelves and heard that name before. Like, wow, that's a weird name for a video game. And, yeah, the legal trouble is only excreted. Excervated. Excerrated? I don't know.

Thank you. Exaggerated? I found the Japanese title I'm not going to read the Japanese but the translation is for a hero you are quite impudent What? Yeah It's Yusha no Kusei Namaikida

Ah, okay, okay Does that check out? This is the AI summary by the way Right, you should, yeah I get it, okay So they had to do something with that So we're learning so much today We're getting some duolingo lessons in at the same time

And to wrap up here, get this everybody there is very little digging in LucasArts to dig Oh One of many problems with that game Bad puzzles Orson Scott Carter is involved in some way But not a lot of digging Do we have anything else to say about this?

This is a good topic But I feel like there's not as many examples As I thought there would be In video gaming Especially retro games I mean I haven't really played Much of Tears at the Kingdom But doesn't that have considerable

A considerable amount of digging? Yeah, there is an underground level but I'm not sure how much digging you do in terms of transforming the terraforming the territory but Bonanza really makes me interested in the future of Nintendo games because I can see how they're going to apply

the voxel-based terraforming of geometry into other things like Mario and Zelda so I feel like that's going to be the next frontier for them because that was not possible on the Switch I guess they were planning Bonanza for the Switch but it would have run at 20 frames per second and it would not have been a good time

Yeah, I've seen the screenshots of what the in-development switch version looked like. And it was meager. It was sparse. There wasn't much happening. So I think as technology grows and gets better and we're doing more things with voxels, I think we're going to be having a lot more fun with digging in games. I mean, Jeremy mentioned Boulder Dash and Passing, but that was definitely an early game that I experienced that requires some thoughtfulness

as far as which space do you enter and which clumb of dirt do you break away because it can lead to treasure. Yeah, the chain reactions. So that's certainly digging, reminiscent of digging, even if it's not quite the same as, you know, Mario 2 or Minecraft. Cool.

Well, I think we've covered the history of digging in video games. If we have neglected any, please let us know kindly. Do not say, I'm surprised. Or I can't believe. Please just be kind because we did as much as we could with this idea. And I think we've covered all the bases. But let's just go over the plugs now. We'll do our own separate plugs after the main show plugs, but this is a free feed episode.

So if you want to support Retronauts, go to patreon.com slash Retronauts and sign up at the $5 level. You get all these episodes a week ahead of time and add free. And you also access a huge amount of bonus stuff. We have two bonus episodes every month. We've been doing that for, I think, almost six complete years. So you have missed out on a lot if you're not part of that tier. These are all full-length episodes about great topics. So check that out.

And we also have a weekly column and podcast by Diamond Fight on that tier. as well. So if you enjoy hearing us, if you want to support the show and you want more stuff, five bucks a month, patreon.com slash retronauts. I will do my plugs last. Let's go around the room. If you have anything else we want to plug, Jeremy. You've got books. You're working with a dark horse. Yes, I am a dark horse. No one, no one bet on me. Did you get to feed the dark horse? They take it to the special stable? No, no. I haven't actually been to their offices yet, even though they're here in Portland. That's right. That's right. They didn't move anywhere. Bastards. No, I do have a lot of books. You can find those on the internet, a bunch at limited rungames.com. The Dark Horse book, The History of Metroidvania, decade one, is available for pre-order at Barnes & Noble, Amazon. You can get it at a comic shop because it's Dark Horse. You could put me in your pull list. I could be in your bin someday. That's amazing. You can also find me on YouTube as Jeremy Parrish. And of course, here on Retronauts, as Jeremy Parish.

And Diamond, how about you? You do stuff for us, but I know you appear elsewhere. I do. The easiest way to find me on the internet is look for Fight Club. F-E-I-T-I-T is my last name. C-L-U-B, that's an English word you already know. I have website, fightclub. Me, but also pick your social media. I'm probably on there as Fight Club. And, yeah, I'm excited to be here. And I'll look forward to our future stuff is about, you know, pulling in video games, pushing in video games, hammers and video games the well is endless Well I'm claiming all these ideas

Diamond I'm sorry The push me pull you of podcasts And as for me I've been your core host here Bob Mackey I'm on X No no I'm still on X But my archive of thoughts are on X

If you want to see where I am now Blue Sky Bob Servo Letterbox Bob Servo And also I do a lot of other podcasts For the Talking Simpsons network It's Patreon.com Slash Talking Simpsons We've got Talking Simpsons

We've got What a Cartoon And then a ton of stuff Behind the Paywall episodes about shows like Futurama and King of the Hill. It's all happening at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. But that is it for us. We will see you again very soon

for another new episode of Rushmanus. Take care. Thank you.