Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 109: The Dig Dug-Mr. Driller Multiverse

Episode Date: July 24, 2017

Ray Barnholt and Henry Gilbert join Bob and Jeremy to discuss gaming's original expanded universe: Namco's Dig Dug, which turns out to be a part of the same lineage (literally) as Mr. Driller and Baraduke.

This week in Retronauts, we go to Do Rue Randol. Hi, everyone. Welcome to this latest episode of Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish. I think I said before that I was exploding into your ear holes or something like that. I don't know. That sounds gross. In any case, it's a podcast. It's here.

You're listening to it. And there's no turning back now. So come and join us as we explore a wonderful world. And by we, I mean myself. And... Hey, it's Bob Mackie. And I dig Nickelodeon's Doug. I'm just kidding.

I think he taught children all the wrong lessons. And I'm opposed to all dugs. By all the wrong lessons, you mean what? Be comfortable with your mediocrity and pine after women who will never love you. That sounds good to me. Be jealous of your friends. I think it taught kids to journalize more. Roger was a true alpha male.

Let's move on. All right. Who else is here? Hi, I'm Ray Barnhold. And for that joke, Bob, I will dig you a shallow group. No. Wow. Shallow.

I deserve more than that. And I'm Henry Gilbert and I'm ready to drill into some knowledge here. Okay. Everyone stop listening now. Oh, so yes. Yes, the topic this week... That was better. The topic this week is one of video gaming's original expanded universes,

perhaps the first, and if not the first, then by far, the most candy-colored. Yes, that's right. It's the Mr. Driller, Dig-Dug, Expanded Universe. As it turns out, a whole lot of games developed by Namco are interconnected. I thought it was just a few, but Ray filled me in on the wisdom here. Apparently, there's a lot of these games Namco made. Like anything with even a vaguely scientific theme, including DigDug, which doesn't really seem that scientific, but whatever, is all part of some grand universal scheme. Yeah.

Excuse me. Well, this came about a little bit later, you know, like a few years ago or so, but Namco basically put all their sort of space or spacious themed games under the UGSF universe, the universal galaxy space force. Okay. So that's like this giant timeline of all these games. that starts with like Ace Combat 3 and goes through like Gallagher and Galaxian and Cyber Sled and... Yeah, like some of the games, I see the connections, like Gapeless, Gallagga, Grobda. Like, Grobda is the tank from Zevius. And like I see how those...

The Zivia stuff does not factor in. What? What? Gropda is not part of this? No, Bosconian is. Yeah, I mean, this, I read through this, it makes so much more sense than Hyrule Astoria ever did. I think the more thought went into this. Maybe Zavius is part of like a different. timeline. Yeah, I think that's

Masanobu Endo's baby. So I just left that alone. But yeah, everything else with shooting in space and it pretty much falls under this new timeline that they didn't say tails or dragon in the title. It's basically part of this. And this all happens in like the late 2000s but also goes into like the year

7,000 something with like Thunderceptor 2. That's where it ends. I don't even know what Thunderceptor 2 is. It's a 3D shooty game. But even the cartoonish Gallagher 88s fits in there too. Does 88? I don't think 88's in there, exactly, but it's only, it's only, oh, yeah, it is. It is, yeah.

But, yeah, some of the other ones are cherry-picked, like, not every Mr. Driller game, but... What? So there's, like, some Mr. Driller games out of continuity? I guess you can read it that way. I think... Mr. Driller-Gee is not canon. You can either. What about, what about Fichiginopacturia?

Listen, you can read it like that, or you can read it as, you know, just a franchise, sort of. Okay, that makes more sense. Who knows? But this episode... Oh, sorry, go ahead. No, no, I'm going to say this episode, we're just going to focus on we're going to cherry pick just the dig-dug and Mr. Driller games in Barduk. Because those are the games that are relevant to what we're talking about, specifically the Hori family. And that's where we're going here.

It's a family matter. So please join us for this grand expedition into the center of the earth. Thank you. So this whole story begins with Dig-Dug. And in the beginning, I am pretty sure that Dig-Dug was not meant to be part of, of some grand canon. It was just a game that they made in the arcades

and it was cute and fun. And then many years later, something happened and someone said, why don't we create a grand story about this? But that's not germane to our discussion of DigDug. I mean, well, Namco is, you know,

they must have been riding high on the success of Pac-Man that they wanted another colorful maze-ish game with cute cartoony enemies to fight. Like, it definitely, I feel like it follows Pac-Man's lead in a lot of ways. Yeah, I think so.

This is, it's not a maze chase game in the sense of, like, there's a pre-existing maze. It's interesting because Dig-Dug is a game where you make your own maze. Yeah. You are digging through the earth and you create tunnels as you dig around. And so, you know, like when you start out on the stage, there's, you know, like a few little openings, a few little areas. areas that have been unearthed, like small tunnels, but as you dig around, like, you're clearing away the earth, which I feel like that was a pretty sophisticated concept for what video games were capable of in 1982.

Yeah, it really does. I just, being able to alter the play field like that does feel like a huge step forward in technology. Yeah, it's perfectile destruction, basically. And, you know, that really wasn't made better until, like, Lemmings. Sounds true. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. I can go with that. But, yeah, so dig-dug is a very simple, single-screen game. It's, you know, like Pac-Man, it has a vertically oriented monitor. So you have, like, the surface of the world at the top of the screen. There's, like, a little tiny sliver of sky, but just enough to give you context. And then beneath that, there's Earth. And, you know, the Earth changes color as it becomes deeper, but it doesn't become any harder to dig through.

I don't think. No. I don't know it doesn't. No. No. So, anyway, you're just a little guy. They used to call him dig-dug. But now we know his name is Taiso Hori.

Yes. But for now, we'll just call him DigDug. And his mission is to kill critters that live in the earth. Violently and horrifically. I don't know what the critters are doing that they deserve to die. They're kind of just minding their own business until Big Doug comes along. Well, they're in the way of science. Are they?

What's the science here? Fracking? Yeah. I think DigDug is the invasive species in this game. It kind of seems like it. But it's just self-defense. from those guys, they're going to kill him when he's digging. The Pookas just want to be his friends

or reaching out to it. I don't know, like he's invading their habitat, isn't he? Yeah, and how he is. He's wrong. It's their underground domicile. He's just there to exploit their resources. But hey, man, he's the one with the air pump. Might make's right. Yeah,

so this definitely does feel like it kind of belongs to the same genre as Pac-Man or, yes, Hey,ankio Alien, where you have kind of a field and there are enemies and you have very sort of limited movements and capabilities and your mission is to, you know, clear the screen of all these creatures and, you know, do so while surviving. Unlike Pac-Man, you're not trying to clear away a maze or anything. Like, the level ends when you kill all the creatures or when the last creature escapes.

And as a kid, it's a cool concept to get because you, you know, at least when I was a kid, you liked, I liked digging things. I like the idea of... You like dugging things. I like the idea of archaeologists, too. We're just like, I'm going to keep digging something. Or I think, I don't know. I think every kid has probably been on the sandbox thought, like, how far down can I dig? Can I dig to China?

I don't know if it was a weird, a weird Midwestern thing, but a lot of the times you would just go outside and dig a hole. Like, I'm digging a hole. What's in? It's free. That's what passed for fun back in 1980s. Yes, setting up death traps in my backyard. Oh, wow. It's a little grim.

So, yeah, actually, now that you mentioned the archaeology thing, I wonder if this was inspired in any way by Indiana Jones. Probably not. But it did come, like, a year after Indiana Jones. So there was the whole, like, rooting through the earth. No, no, there's no archaeology. I mean, archaeology just, or like, digging up, this goes to the cave mania thing. We mention every podcast, I think. But, like, digging up, digging up fossils and stuff.

Digging of things was becoming a cooler thing. Though, I mean, like, Barry Treasurer always is something, and that's why I love, too, on the single screen, like the different strata of it, like you knew you were getting farther down, the darker it got. Yeah, and it's, I feel like this game was pretty unprecedented in your ability to, like we said, you know, sort of dig and reshape the screen. This would become, you know, a game mechanic we'd see in something like Boulder Dash, but that came around in 1984, 85. So DigDug comes before that. There was one game released contemporaneously with DigDug called Mr. Do. And those were released within months of one another. So I don't think either one necessarily took inspiration from the other.

I think they both just kind of came up with the same idea around the same time, unless you know differently. No, I was just going to ask, does Mr. Dood or Doug or Doug? I think he's a doer. I think he's a doer. He just does. If he's a Doug or doesn't mean he has like 19 children, is that how it works? No, actually, that's dig-dug. Oh, okay.

All right. The whole point of this episode. Yes, the progeny. Yeah. So, I actually have never played Mr. Doe, but it's pretty much the same thing. Like, you're a clown digging around getting apples or something? Basically, yes. I never played it, but it was always in the Max and Saved by the Bell.

It was always the one arcade game. I don't know why it was Mr. Doe, but some extra was always playing it, fakingly playing it. I don't know. Mr. Doe was by Universal, which is not the game. the same as Universal Studios. Oh, I didn't. So I was going to make a thought there, like maybe saved by the bell was produced by Universal, but that's... I bet they just bought the cheapest arcade machine they could find.

And it's also that possibility. Or it could be that Universal was out of business, so they were like, oh, no one's going to come after us with the copyright on this. That's true. If they were even thinking of that back then, I... But the enemies, Bob mentioned it earlier. It is, when you think about it, the exploit. Like pumping a character full of air to the point that it explodes and that's how you kill it is that's a bit worse than even, you know. Stomping?

Yeah, if you, if you, if there's a whole fetish around that on the internet now. Well, that means a fetish for everything. That final spray graphic of them just inflated it with just a giant hole blowing out of them. I now find it like a little disturbing when I did before. It's like, oh, no. They're so cute, though. They are. It's not gory.

I heard somewhere that Pookas like it when they die, so. Oh, yeah? Scientists said that. How about that? So, yeah. Before you stab them and then you pump them. Oh, yeah. Man.

There are two kinds of, what the hell. Two kinds of enemies in DigDug. It's a pretty limited playset, but I mean, you know, that's still one more than in Pac-Man. There were just ghosts. Now there's a little round guy. Kind of looks like a fry guy for McDonald's, but without the shagginess. Yeah, wearing it's like scuba goggles. Yeah, he's got scuba goggles.

Those are pukas. They're cute, round red things. And then there's Fygars, little dragons. They're also cute. Do we know the etymology behind these names? I'm curious as to how they were called Pookas and Figars. I was like, as a kid, I was like, is Figar related to Rigar? Are those connected in any way?

There's a, there's a candy called Puka. No, puka, yeah, yeah. Puka, yeah. P-U-K-K-A. Or maybe that they're like puka shells? I have no idea. I don't think there's a lot about this game that I wasn't able to find information about. like the etymology of character names

and who made this game, who designed it. Oh, I'm sorry. In Irish mythology Apuka is a hobgoblin. So you never know. I don't, I really don't think that's. What's a Fygar in Irish mythology? That is a kind of dance, I think. No, I don't know. It's a pole dance. I wouldn't be totally shocked

if Japan borrowed Irish mythology to name something. They like a lot of borrowed mythology? I think it's just a silly name. Like all the things George Lucas came up with. Yeah. That's true. What is a Tuscan Raider, really? Yeah. They're from Tuscany. They're Italian.

And, well, I do want to bring up the popularity of this. Like, this wasn't Pac-Man or Donkey Kong huge, but it was a hit. It was, yeah, I saw it all over the place. It was a pretty common game. And that it got, I wanted to bring up this song now while we're still in 1982. We must. Okay, so, Pac-Man Fever was a big hit for Barnes and Barnes. It was like a very...

With Barnes and Barnes? No, I got, oh, sorry, that's guys... Martin's bars is fishheads. That's fish heads. Roger's in Epstein. Yeah. No, it's, uh, Black Man Fever.

Buckner and Garcia. Buckner and Garcia, who could forget. I can't believe, it was such a weird career turn for Jerry Garcia, but yeah. So Pac-Man Fever was such a big hit that everybody wanted to get into the novelty video game song racketed in the early 80s, including a guy who his last hit in the 50s was a novelty song about the twist. Chubby Checker recorded a dig-dug song that, was never released and people found

the recording of it years later and like a few years ago and released it to the internet but it was never released which is crazy. I can play a bit of it. Yeah, you might as well. DJ Bob coming in. He's gonna start

come on everybody. Oh, come on, chubby. Well, they have to have the thing for the radio announcer to talk about. Yeah. It's 12 past the hour I'm with you so far So how to do the dig-duck dance

Through a wall of dirt That's not a dance Quick now turn around What do you dig-duck dance Tunnel through the wall Without being hurt Through the dirt Dig underground without being hurt

That's not a dance It's actually just what you do in Dig-Dug And he's not that chubby Is he still alive? Can we write him a letter about this? He's alive at the time of this recording. He's still selling his microwave dinners or whatever. He, I, that guy on Twitter, Vic Berger makes fun of him all the time and he's still alive.

But the, I, I, what I like about that song is that it doesn't make up facts for DigDug. And, oh, it works with all the known facts about DigDug. People wouldn't start making up things about DigDug until Mr. Driller came along. I think he was just handed a bullet point list of DigDug facts. And I swear to God, like, if you take a cruise ship anywhere, There's a 10% chance that Chubby Checker will be performing on it. I guarantee it. But it's so...

Does he take requests? It's so crazy that like in 82 or 83 when he recorded that, that even though he's like, I'm an old man, I got to start cashing in on these young kids things. I mean, this was for an Atari commercial that didn't happen, right? I thought it was it? Yeah. Nintendo just probably, I mean, excuse me, Atari,

probably just drove a dump truck of money up to his house. They couldn't get... And they got the song and were like, ah, you know. Yeah. Never mind. Instead, they went with the Car 54 parody for Mario Brothers. I like that. I like that one, though.

That's great. I'd rather have this. Group was pumping on the podcast. This is original, at least. Okay, okay. I prefer George Plimpton. I'm sorry. Okay, sorry to derail with the dig ducks line.

No, it's fine. We got to fill some space in this episode. Is what I like. Anyway, so yeah, you deal with two kinds of enemies, and they're very cute, and they will kill you, you deal with two kinds of enemies, and they're very cute, and they will kill you just by touching you or breathing fire. at you so it's kill or be killed in this dark underground world and as DigDug you have the ability to fire this

spear gun at the bad guys and if you connect like this little umbilical shoots out and has a pretty decent range if it connects then it like stuns the enemy and you have a few seconds to start pressing the attack button and it will inflate them and then they will explode

You can shoot it through dirt a little bit right like it goes through a little bit yeah and the FIGARS can breathe fire at you through quite a bit of dirt, actually. So there's a little more range there. But basically, there's a little bit of a risk-reward mechanic with this because enemies are basically, once you start playing, they start kind of moving in toward you. And enemies have the ability to float ghost-like through the walls. They just turn into eyes, kind of like the ghosts and Pac-Man after you eat them. But instead of, you know, this meaning they're defeated,

this means they've become insubstantial and have begun to use the speed force or whatever to travel through the walls. I'm sure there were limitations that made it so the enemies couldn't tunnel as well. But I just like how there's no explanation. They just turned into ghosts. That would have changed the stage layout. And so I think it was a deliberate design decision so that only the player is reshaping the level. Right. But yeah, this gives them sort of an ability that you don't have.

Like, they can move at angles besides, you know, cardinal directions, and they can move through dirt and rocks and so on and so forth. So you have to be careful because when you're pumping air into an enemy, it takes a couple of seconds, and during that time you have to stand motionless. You can fire your dart gun at your umbilical at an enemy and start to inflate them and then pull away, and that will leave them stunned for a little bit and then they'll recover. So that gives you, like you can buy a little bit of time that way. Yeah, I like that higher level strategy to it that you could, if you didn't want to explode this enemy or if another one's coming right at you, you could at least, you know, stun them for a little bit and then like then pull back and turn around. Yeah, see the other one. Are you given more points depending on what layer you kill the enemy on? I think maybe like lower you get more points, maybe.

I'm not sure. It could be because I think, yeah, I think you get fewer points for getting someone near the surface. Yeah. Because once you get down to one enemy, especially if it's just. to Puka, it will try to escape. And if it floats up to the top of the screen, it makes it to the surface, it will run off the side of the screen and you lose out on a score bonus for that stage. So, yeah, I think the further up they are, they might give you fewer points. But in any case, one thing you can do with sort of like stunning enemies and kind of, you can kind of

control the crowd a little bit and then sort of kite them. And you can do that to line them up for a score bonus, which you get by dislodging rock. and crushing a bunch of enemies at once. There's not really gravity in this game, except when it comes to rocks. It has, like, naive gravity. Like, you're seeing it from a side view, but you can move up and down freely.

It doesn't matter. But there are these rocks within the dirt. And if you clear out a tunnel beneath, like directly beneath the rock, it'll cause the rock to dislodge and fall. And it can kill you, but it can also kill enemies. And if you hit multiple enemies with a rock, then you get big multipliers for your score. So that's kind of what you really want to do

if you're serious about points. As Chubby would say, you tunnel under rocks without being hurt. Exactly. He's giving you tips. We appreciate what he does for us. Yeah, I, as a kid playing it probably when it was like five years old at that point, I, the gravity, the trickiness of the gravity confused me. I was like, but I'm walking upside down and all these things, but this, oh, this rock's going to fall because I gave, I put a little hole under it. I liked it as a kid because I understood.

to Pac-Man, but I was not good at it. I could play like four or five levels of this and be okay at it before it got too hard. Like it gave me some time to actually play the game. I took to Pac-Man much easier than Dig-Dug when I came to them in the late 80s, way,

when they were pretty old at that point. But yeah, I always was more of a Pac-Man fan than a Dig-Dug fan. Well, Pac-Man is a simpler game. You don't have an action button in Pac-Man, whereas you doing this. And, you know, there is a difference in kind of like on a fundamental level because in Pac-Man, aside from when you collect an energizer pellet, you are

defenseless. So you're always on the run. In this game, you're not defenseless. So it's more about managing enemies and kind of watching where they're moving. But you're not just trying to escape them. On the other hand, I mean, on the contrary, you're trying to destroy them. So it does kind of change up that power dynamic that you have from Pac-Man a little bit, or a lot, actually. But it's so lame his name. I'm glad they changed his name from just like DigDug in the DigDug game.

I guess it's the same as Pac-Man. You're playing as Pac-Man and Pac-Man or Miss Pac-Man and Miss Pac-Man. So you're playing his Dig-Dug and Dig-Dug. That's the name in the game. Sure. I mean, do they call him Dig-Dug on the arts? Or do they even give him a name on the art?

I think he's just the player. Okay. You second person. I mean, the name I think we should mention just, it's very enigmatic, it's very, like, it grabs your attention. It's just like, as if Pac-Man was called, like, eat-eight or something. It's just, like, these two verbs next to each other that give you an idea of, like, this is what the game is about. I think that's really great.

But Doug evokes the name Doug, so. Yeah, yeah. People just sort of adopt it. It's also clever in that way. Yeah. Something else worth noting with this game is that it features musical walking, which I don't know if there's a technical term for that, but the game has a theme. It has theme music, but it only plays as. dig dog or taiso walks

So like if you walk Then you get to hear the jolly little theme That plays in the background But when you stop, the music stops It's an eight second loop Yeah, it's like some bluegrass going on It's very like banjo plucking Like I could see Shigeruimodo listening to that

And I can do that with my video games I love bluegrass Because when you're moving, it's like, it gives you a sense of, like, I don't know, it feels like you're doing something. Progression? Yeah, progression. But when you're not moving, you hear like, beam, boom, beam, boom. As things are, like, moving towards you. So it's, like, danger and eerie creepiness.

Yeah, it does a really interesting, like, takes a really interesting approach to sound. It kind of combines, like, Pac-Man's noises with kind of the way sound works in Donkey Kong, where Mario has, like, footsteps. And this kind of takes those footsteps to the next level. He's got like those shoes that Philippe wore in Aikwood when he runs around. It says, here comes a special boy. That's the lyrics to that song I've decided. That's great. That's great.

The character design for Taiso is, it's very blind. They couldn't get much in there. So he's kind of just like a white potato with a blue stripe on his face. Yeah, I think, I mean, the goggles are there to, he is a white potato. Like the goggles are there to be like, we don't have enough room for. a face. He's just wearing these goggles he can see out of. I like how his Sprite looks. I like, I really love the art for this

game on the arcade cabinet, especially the Pooko. Yeah, yeah. But though I mean, Taiso looks very different on the cat, which is hardly a different. He has a face. He has a face on the cabinet. Yeah. Well, so many arcade games had the, the reality of the arcade art was very different from the sprites,

so that's not like different for DigDug. Yeah, it always gave him a face. He hasn't exposed to the face. Yep. As opposed to just his eyeballs. Uh-huh. There's not really that much more to say about this game, but there is one last little detail that I want to point out, and that is when you advance to the next stage, each stage you travel through, the stage indicator is denoted by a little flower that blooms at the top left corner of the screen. I never got that. Oh, I mean, no, it's like you go to stage two and another

flower appears. Oh, I see. You mean you know. I never understood that. Yeah. Like, it's kind of an invisible little feature. You don't really think about it, but they use kind of the same markers in Gallagher and Pac-Man. And so if you know to look for it, you're like, oh, that's what that means. And then I think when you get to five, you get like a special flower. I have one more thing to add, actually. Okay. It never got an NES version, which is weird.

But the Atari 2,600 version is surprisingly competent. It's not the one you want to play, but... It's kind of how I knew it first. Oh, really? Okay, because, like, I had an NES, but like big lots and things like that were selling Atari games for a dollar, so I would just buy them all. And I was like, oh, I know DigDug. And I played.

And I was like, wow, the music is here. There are lots of enemies on the screen. You can dig through the dirt. It's like this is a surprisingly complex Atari game. I think the lack of the NES port just speaks to, one, DigDug's prominence that it was not more important than Pac-Man or Gallaguff. So at least at that time it wasn't. Maybe they underestimated it. There was a lot of weirdness with Namco games on the NES.

That too. Yeah, that too. There was an NES port or a Dig-Dug port. for Famicom in Japan. It just didn't come to the U.S. And all of Namco's games initially came from other publishers. Namco did not publish on the NES until like 1992 or 93. I believe it was in David Seff's Game Over book.

They described it as the boss of Namco didn't like having to listen to Nintendo's limits on what he could publish. And it was, it sounded like a real clash of egos over that. Well, my understanding is that Namco was. was one of the first publishers on Famicom. And so they were like a really strong supporter of the system when it first launched. And, you know, as such, they were a big contributor to the sort of popularity and spread of the Famicom along with Hudson and Enix and a couple of other Konami publishers. And when they first started publishing, there were no limitations on what people could publish, how they could publish. but as the Famicom grew

and quality kind of overall began to diminish because a lot of fly-by-night publishers and developers jumped into the market Nintendo began to exert stronger controls

and supposedly Namco was like well we were here from the start we shouldn't have to renegotiate our contract with you we should just be able to do whatever we want and Nintendo said

no everyone does it our way or you don't do it anyway and Namco said okay we won't do it anyway so they kind of stepped back and you saw a lot of Namco support on PC Engine Torpographics and on Mega Drive Genesis, but not so much on NES.

Until they teamed up with those thieves at Tengen. Well, that's another thing where there's like a connection. That's a whole other episode of retrofacts. Midway, Atari, and Namco were all connected in various ways, and Tengen was an offshoot of Atari. Atari games, the arcade division. Yep. And, you know, Atari published and distributed a lot of Namco games in the U.S.

So that's how that kind of connection came through. And Pac-Ban was released as a licensed game by Tengen. It's one of their three games. And then the license went away and they released it as an unlicensed game in America. So Namco was happy to throw out some games to be published in the U.S. unlicensed by Tengen. But they also published through Bondi a few games, including Zavius and Gallagher and a couple of others. Tengen was by Pac-Man.

That was the version of Pac-Man I owned for the NES, yeah. Well, Dig-Dug 2 did come to the U.S. on NES, but not the original Dig-Dug. And I think it was just by the time that it would have come out, it was kind of like, you know. Too simple? It was like a six or seven-year-old game. Yeah. They probably just said, eh. So anyway, we never got the NES version, but there were other home ports.

And there have been many conversions and ports of the game since then. NAMCOs put it on everything. Like they did. done that with all their arcade classes. You won't find it without Pac-Man, basically. Yeah, but it's, was it on volume one of Namco Museum? Yes. I think so.

So that was kind of like their, yeah, their, their first step forward. Pac-Man and Dig-Dug and I want to say Galaxian or maybe Gallagher. Sure. Anyway, so it's kind of up and there. upper echelons of Namco games, even if it does, you know, didn't make its way to NES. So it goes. Okay, so that was DigDug. Now let's talk about DigDug 2, a game that I completely ignored until the sort of weird

spiritual successor came out for DS. And then I was like, what is this game about? So I went back and discovered DigDug 2. Did you guys ever played DigDug 2 back in the day? I did. All right. That's pretty much how I knew it. All right.

Like I said, on 2600, I had Dig-Dug 1, and then on NAS was Dig-Dug 2. All right. I think I rented it once. They're just like, oh, this is kind of neat. So, yeah. So tell us about it a little bit. So it's not just me talking. Well, you could call it Dig-Dug 2 colon dig up, stupid.

I was thinking of that same quote, right. Thank you. Excellent. Instead of being underground, you're overground, basically tearing up whole chunks of these islands to basically sink the enemies instead of just exploding them. Yes, it's indirect attacks this time. Yes, yes.

So, yeah, Dick Doug basically has this jackhammery type thing, and you'd use that on these pegs, on the islands, and then they just, like, make these fissures in the land, and you just use that to break off these chunks of the land, like I said. And if there happens to be enemies on those chunks that will fall in sync, then points for you. So you still inflate the enemies, but not to explosion. You can. Well, what was it? Yeah, you can still do it, but it's... I think you get more points for... Yes, the artful way is to get them all in one go

by breaking off the pieces of the island. Yeah, take out as many as possible at a time. This is a comparison for nobody, but this game reminds me of the Namco game, also Namco game, Libel Rabble, where I really like the concept, but after like two levels, I can't wrap my mind around anything that's happening,

and I just give up, like, I'm checking out now. I will say it is really easy to get panicked in Dug-Dug 2. both of them really but DigDug 2 is can Yeah you don't have the You don't have the barriers that you do in DigDuck Like in DigDug Enemies can move through the dirt

But they're not just going to be like Zipping around through the dirt Like they'll pause for a second If they're in a tunnel And then they'll be like Okay and then they'll immaterialize And then start moving Whereas here they're just on the surface

And they're chasing after you Yeah and you have to think a little bit mathematically Because you have to figure out What's going to cut off that chunk of the island Or is it going to sink me because I'm on a disconnected part of it and so on and so forth. So you basically have to think real fast as it gets exponentially harder. I didn't think to look, but what year did the game Quicks come out?

Oh, boy. What was that 87? No, no, no. 85 because FokinomatsyOSME 4 has Quicks in it, and that's 1985. Okay. Yeah, I was thinking Quicks was pretty early in the 80s, like 83, 84. Actually, actually, it's 1981. line.

Oh, okay. Well, there you go. So even earlier. Simple enough to... So in that case, I'm going to go ahead and say that this was Namco's answer to Quicks. Because the basic concept is actually really similar.

You're claiming territory in large pieces and trying to clear away enemies within that space. Quicks, you're just trying to, like, you know, get a certain percentage of the board under your control, but you're kind of doing it the same way. You're like creating mathematical, you know, plotting lines, basically. and then whichever side is, I think, smaller. No, not necessarily. Actually, how the hell is it determined which side that you claim in Quicks? I can't remember.

Regardless, the best version of this game is Gals Panic. It's the Thinking Man's Kits. Sure. I'm kidding. Part of your body you're thinking with? Never mind. I mean, I guess DigDug 2 does continue the DigDug style of destroying your map to to do, to continue.

Ruthless vengeance against wildlife. This is much more destructive. Like you're, you're not just, you know, carving out little holes. You're sinking entire island chains. Yeah, though, the digging is not, you don't dig all that much

for another dig, dug, dog game. You just do the, the spikes in the ground. Well, you're digging just very rapidly and violently. I feel like another character came before you and did all the hard work, like setting up all the spikes. Like, where's his game? Well, maybe it's, it was form and spikes. It was formant spikes.

Oh, God. More than one game he appeared in excellent. I mean, maybe chronologically, first he digs in Digdug 1, and then in DigDug 2, he completes his mission of blowing up the map. There are no spikes in Digdug 1. That's actually how the DS game works, but we'll get into that. You do the groundwork first. Yeah, so there's not really that much more to say about it because it is kind of like a sort of complex game, but also very simple. and it just never really seemed to catch on. Like, I certainly didn't really know anything about it.

Trouble in Paradise was the subtitle on NES. Isn't that like a Hulk Hogan vehicle? It's Thunder in Paradise. Oh, Thunder in Paradise. Thank you. And you're not fighting pythons. You're fighting FIGARS. Oh, I don't want to mess with those pythons.

They're racist. Okay. So anyway, yeah, you can't really think of anything else. That's okay. It was there. It existed. So now we'd like to change gears and talk about a game that's not DigDug and is not Mr. Driller, but is connected to them by blood, by DNA.

That is Baraduke. Baraduke, how do you pronounce it. Whatever. Sounds too much like Marmaduke to me. I was thinking of Marmaduke. Like, what's that crazy Baradook? Just another part of the fun. I love when Baraduke knock over the garbage cans.

It's my favorite one. He's so big. So this game has nothing to do with DigDug in terms of mechanics, in terms of design, in terms of hearings in terms of characters. But it turns out that the protagonist who, oh, in a year before Metroid came out for Famicom

turned out to be a woman in a space suit hiding her gender behind mystery accoutrements. I thought of that too. I mean, the character's name is Kissy, so that might give it away, but this is a game I didn't really know a lot about. There are a lot of

Namco games of this era. In the arcades, called Toby. I'm not sure where the name Kissy came from. I think he's Marcio. What's that? His first name's Masio.

Oh. Okay. Okay. I thought it said on the screen, the arcade screen, Kissia is watching a long play. Yeah, yeah, no, Bob's right. Yeah.

Oh, really? Later, they called her. Yeah. But this is one of these, there are many Namco games of this era that have these names that do not signify at all what they're about.

So I didn't really even know about this game. But yeah, I immediately thought of Metroid where the last screen is her taking off her helmet. There's a beautiful anime woman underneath. And I don't know if that was an influence at all?

or do you think it was popular enough to influence Metroid? I don't know. It probably was just a thing, like an anime thing. You kind of had that like a swimsuit bikini warrior girl thing around that time. I think it was like the anime version of a librarian, like letting down their hair and taking off their glasses. It's taking off the helmet. Breakfast club. Or like in the beginning of Nazika.

Like you don't see Nazika's face for the first like 10 minutes and then like, oh, she's a beautiful princess. That has to be where it comes from. That is the, like, episode zero of this idea. Every game is Nousica. Pretty much. So, anyway, the point is that Kissy married Digdug. Whoa. She is Digdug's wife.

Yeah. Even though they exist in what appears to be totally different settings and times, evidently Digduck takes place in the sci-fi future. Yep. Well, apparently they're part of the UGSF. Yeah. So I guess Dig-Dug is like patrolling the ruins of Earth. and destroying the surface of the planet in an attempt to take out the ravening monsters,

whereas Kissy's out in space trying to rescue little yellow friendo guys. When you save them, they say, I'm your friendo. I mean, you know, clearly Dig Dug's going around with some sort of fancy tech to dig underground and not be, like, crushed by everything. He's got naive gravity working for him. Yeah, so science fiction's in there somewhere.

It's not completely unbelievable. I mean, you look at dig-dug and you think, oh, it's kind of old-timey looking. It's got that banjo music and it's got like a pneumatic pump. But no, it takes place far in the future. Evidently. I love this, by the way. Maybe we'll talk about this more of as Mr. Driller's stuff comes up, but just the fact that this is really just one of my favorite things about video games in general

that Namco just looked at these two main characters and thought. Yeah, of course. It's Mr. Drillers' parents. Makes perfect sense. Why not? And, you know, it's something that really doesn't happen that often in video games is to have, like, a defined family. Like, Namco sorted it with Pac-Man, okay, but I think they did it under duress because Midway was just like, hey, we're making Packed Stepsister now. And they're like, fuck, okay.

Packed step-sister. But after that, not so much. Like, you don't see it with Mega Man because he's a Pinocchio figure. He has a sister and a brother. But he's a robot. You don't see it in Mario, except for Mario Luigi. but even Nintendo will go out of their way to say Wario and Waluigi aren't related.

They don't have parents. They were brought by the stork. Yeah. Well, they were dropped off to somebody, though. Were they? Oh, and by the way, Mega Man X is just like spilling into the streets with gay subtext. That's not going to happen. Well, I mean, Mega Man has his family because Astro Boy has that family.

That's why he's going to do. Pretty much, yeah. On the other hand, though, the games that I thought of that do have really defined families are all Namco games, basically. Pac-Man, Mappie, Mr. Driller. Oh, yeah, Mappy has Mappy kids. Teckon. Did someone marry Mappy without me knowing? Yeah, there's multiple Mappi.

I got snub for that wedding invite. So it's very funny. Man, Tekken is all family. Wedding bells for Mappi. You don't remember that game? God, a dating set. Is there a lot of family in Saul caliber? A little bit, a little bit.

Yeah. There's Keelik and his sister. This is the real reason I'm on the show because I want to talk about this so much. No, I'm glad. I love this. I love this whole family dynamic that they made. I mean, you joke about a dating sim. Bob, but that kind of happened.

You're right. No, you are right. The Namco High School or whatever. Yeah. So, I mean, that was like official fan game. But it's also like, okay, to use Nintendo again. It's like if they said, okay, now Sammis and Captain Falcon are fucking and their son is the mock writer, right? I mean, that's... No, mock writer's a girl.

Oh, is that so? Yeah. Okay. She did the helmet thing. Oh, my God. Jesus. I didn't know this. If you asked the Smash Brothers community, that is the opinion.

I think that is the canon they have created. I would just say it's so great that Namco did that later on. It's just, yeah. Of course. Well, Namco was more ready to let their characters get old and domesticated while meanwhile Nintendo does want you to feel. What was it? Mario keeps getting younger.

He's 25. Yeah. That's not fair. Yeah. He was at least 50 when I was a kid. What is happening? Now I'm getting close to 50 and he's getting younger. That jackass.

It's not fair. Anyway, Baradook is good. I never play that. I never play that game. I never play that. So Baraduke kind of reminds me a little bit of Section Z. It's not auto-scrolling. And you don't have to use, like, separate buttons to fire forward or backward. But the concept of, like, a person flying through these kind of, like, limited spaces. Going underground. Going underground. Kind of, like, through these interconnected tunnels, trying to acquire hidden things.

In this case, you're rescuing critters rather than, like, fire. finding power-ups and stuff. But I don't know, there's just something about it that seems very section-seous, especially like the NES version of Section Z as opposed to the arcade version, which is a little, it's kind of a little bit of a puny game, honestly. You're right. But, yeah, there's, I mean, there's not that much to Baraduke. It's fun and okay.

There was a sequel, too. Yeah, there was. Pretty similar. Yeah. It was much less of a weird, what the hell is? this than DigDug 2 was, that's for sure. But it is kind of a forgotten game, and I honestly, I don't know if I'd know

about it, if not for the DigDug Driller connection. Yeah. With Domino With Domino's week-long With Domino's week-long deal, you can carry out large three-topping pizzas and now, medium three-topping handmade pan pizzas for $7.99 each.

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Susumu-Hori's job really stinks. He's constantly drilling down into the earth, dealing with toxic cookies and suffocation. That's no way to make a living. I think Susumu-Hori needs to use dice. Dice can provide insight and guidance for his perfect job and yours, a perfect job to match your skills, experience, and location. Dice has been connecting tech pros with job opportunities for more than 20 years. They're now a full-blown career hub delivering the tools and resources that you need to manage

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retronauts? I just want to know. Um, is it through the podcast one app? That is right. We are a podcast one podcast and we are both recommending to you, the listener, the podcast one app. So if you use the podcast one app, you can find out everything about your favorite shows, including retronauts. From what I hear, right, Jeremy, we have some bonus content on that app, right? Yeah, actually, if you really, really want to get inside the studio here, which, I don't know, it's kind of a, it's kind of a gloomy looking studio. But you can, you can with the 360-degree VR cam option on some episodes.

You can be in the studio with the VR headset of your choice, I think. It won't be like really being in the studio, though, because you won't get that, that nice smell that a warm, unventilated room gets after six hours of marathon. recording, but it's as close as you can come without feeling nauseated. There's really no other podcast app like the Podcast One app. Download the all-new podcast app now in the app store or on Google Play. All right. We are back from our compulsory advertisery advertiser break. And now we're talking about the thing that we're really here to talk about.

At least I am. This is a series that I dearly love, and I'm sad that died. And it is connected to DigDug, but kind of as a retcon, but kind of not, actually. I mean, even though it was released as Mr. Driller in the Arcades and on consoles, in its heart, it carries, like, creative DNA to DigDug. So I guess it made sense that they said it also carries, like, actual physical DNA of DigDug. Yeah. So, Ray, you want to fill us in on this?

Since you added this to the notes, I feel like I could talk about it, but it would probably be more interesting coming from you. Well, funnily enough, it was going to be DigDug 3 in conceptualized in, like, 1996. And it was basically just going to be like a puzzle version. It was also going to be called Dig Attack because they had Pack Attack, which was a awesome game. So they're going to do a DigDug. In 1996 seems like a really weird time to release a 2D sequel to DigDug. Yeah.

I mean, that's right up there with elevator action returns and like, what are you doing? I mean, I love elevator action returns. It's such a game out of time. But just when everybody is loving polygons and making things with polygons. Yeah, especially in the arcade where it's like 3D is a new thing. This is where you go for the flash. So, 1996, Donkey Kong gives us Super Mario 64 in Revolutionist and IAS games. In 1996, Dig-Dug almost gives us Dig-Dug 3 starring a teddy bear.

Oh, that's right, yes. It was going to be Dig-Dug at first, but then they also had a version that had just like a teddy-bear-looking character as well instead of Mr. Driller. Even cuter. Yeah. So what they ended up with was a game that released in 1999, three years later, because I think Namco said, like, management was like, well, okay, so it's cool that you're reaching back into our history. But is this really a good idea? Like, do we really need to make this sequel? And my understanding is that basically it was kind of created in the background,

and they kind of tinkered around with it. And eventually came up with something, and executives were like, oh, yes, okay, let's do this. Yeah, of course. Yeah, it seems like one of those back burner projects that leads work on while working on the real game and then eventually present the demo. and sell it. Yeah, the old Mega Man 2 Gambit. Yep.

And it worked. The game they came up with was, I think, woefully misunderstood and resented at the time of its debut. Yes, by me, too. Oh, by you. I hated that faster. I didn't hate it, but I was like, what is this? I mean, it was a game that, like, visually actually was kind of ahead of its time. It looks like sort of the precursor to modern flash games.

Like, it had this very, like, same. like simple bold line art style like it was so so not in keeping with what any other games looked like right then mr driller was crushing candy before everyone else yes totally was i mean it it it really does kind of feel like they made a mobile game before any such thing existed and that's not a bad thing it's a really fun it's a very simple game but very fun but let's talk about why people resented it first mainly because of soul caliber um so when when namcoe announced support for Dreamcast they were like we're making two original

putting two like great arcade games on Dreamcast and the first one they showed off and launched was Soul Calibur which was a genre defining high watermark for home video game visuals and depth it was

an enormously deep fighting game with stunning graphics and great music and everyone was like this is why I'm buying a Dreamcast I have to own Soul Calibur. It's arguably the best stream cast game. I'd argue that.

And the second game, they announced, people were like, oh, my God, it's going to be as good as Soul Calibur. What is this going to be? I can't wait. What is it going to be? Mr. Triller? Weird. I wasn't part of this conversation.

I didn't realize there was this resentment about it. Oh, yeah. People were like, are they trolling us? What's happening? It sounds like a wind waker type situation. Kind of, except that this game is not, this is not the kind of game where people were like I'm angry about the visuals but okay actually it's a really great

sequel to this beloved franchise this game was like I mean there was nothing of soul caliber about this there was no depth I mean yes you're digging down into the ground a lot of depth it's a literal depth but not actual like substance

it's a great game but very shallow and you know it's kind of one of those a moment to learn a lifetime to master things because it gets really hard but there's just not that much to it. It's simple and cute and totally archaic looking

in terms of visuals and you look at what Namco put on Dreamcast those two games, that's it, that's the entirety. No, don't forget Miss Pac-Man maze men. All right, yes, which wasn't even developed internally in Namcoco. And also a crappy Namco Museum. Okay, so, yeah, but... Okay, so basically you have those,

and then you compare that to, like, Capcom, who was just pouring forth, just oozing love onto Dreamcast. And so, yeah, people were like, screw that game. That game can burn in hell. Stupid Mr. Driller. I hate it forever.

And I didn't feel that way because I don't really care that much about Soul Calibur. I'm not a 3D fighting fan. So I didn't have that resentment. But at the same time, I still, like, played in and it was like, what? Why would I want this game?

This is like a mini game that belongs in another game. It wasn't until a few years later. I was hanging out with my girlfriend at the time, and one of her housemates was playing the PlayStation version of Mr. Driller, and it was like super into it. And so I kind of just watched them play for a while and was like, you know, there's actually something to this game. Like the music's great. I love the music, and it's actually really fun. So I kind of, I kind of came around to it. It's like, it kind of reminds me of another Namco game from the same era, Kloa, where the first time I played it,

I was like, this is really underwhelming. And I want something. much deeper than this and, you know, it feels more sophisticated and, and with the times, more cutting edge. And then I came back to it later and, you know, actually, it was really good. Sometimes you just have to kind of stop and take stock and not look at the march of history and the march of progress and to properly appreciate a game. Not just to some of its parts. Yeah, I didn't. I was not aware of it until after it was out. Probably I didn't play it until a year after it was out when the Dreamcast wasn't officially

dead yet, but it was dying and it was, me and my brother, though, loved the Dreamcast so much, we were playing every game we could get our hands on for it, and so eventually after you played Sega bass fishing enough times, you dig a little deeper and you find Mr. Driller,

no pun intended. You already said dig deeper. But we just loved it. Like, we probably, if we paid full price for it, it'd have been marked down to that point, but maybe we would have not even tried it because we would have thought that it seems too simple for a full-price game. But, yeah, the complexity to it and just the real thing that got me was just the anxiety of playing

and it's just like, oh, the pressure keeps mounting, it's mounting more and more. It can be a very claustrophobic game. Yes, there is. Yeah. Yeah, so, Bob, do you have any personal anecdotes about those? Yeah, actually, I think you turned me on to the game through your writing, and I was I think this is more a comment on capitalism and not a comment on me. But I've worked several jobs where it's like, we don't have anything for you to do.

Like, just fill this seat. Your job is just to be an employee. And I had a job at a bank for like five weeks. I eventually quit out of bored and becomes because no one would train me. I just would show up and sit in my cubicle and like read whatever stories I could access on Gutenberg. That's a salary man experience, man. I guess so. Maybe I had it made.

Did you have to go out drinking with your boss after work? No, that would have made it much better. It was a job in a bank in my dying, in my dead town in the basement of a bank. And I just needed things to fill my time. And I had a flip phone. And I played a, I would lock myself in the bathroom for hours and play Mr. Driller on my flip phone until I eventually quit out of boredom. Maybe they were trying to train you, but you were locked into the bathroom and they couldn't find you.

I mean, it felt more like a social experiment than a job. Like how much boredom and misery can one man handle? On this episode of the Bob Show, will he finally break? Oh, God, yeah, I think there were cameras trained on me at all times. But, yeah, like, that got me through that experience in the dead of winter. So, thank you, Mr. Driller. Ray, what about you? Oh, I don't even know exactly that, I mean, like I said, like I intimate it, I didn't really like the game at first.

So it took a few years for me to sort of revisit it and get back into and realize, oh, yeah, there is some technicality here, and it can be more like a puzzle game and not just a dig straight down game. But, yeah, after that, yeah, I appreciated it a lot more. And this is about the time when Game Boy Advance came out and then Mr. Driller 2 came out for that and so on and so forth. Which you imported, you should add, because Mr. Driller 2 didn't come out in America until like 2006. I imported the Game Boy. I probably stole the game from a little wrong.

Oh, okay. I was surprised to find out it was an arcade game because even though the Internet was around when I played it, I wasn't that curious to find out what other versions there were. But then I think it was like 2001 or two, my was some family trip, road trip. And we stopped in a, it was a roundtable. We went to a roundtable pizza. And in there was the Mr. Driller machine.

I was like, wow, one, it's crazy to see a relatively modern arcade machine in restaurants. And it's not a big buck shooting, what? Yes, yeah, or a golden tea. Yeah. Yeah. For myself, I have never seen the original Mr. Driller in arcades, but the Metrion here in San Francisco, back when that had an arcade, when I first moved here, they had Mr. Driller G. And that was like my second reconsideration of the game. This was like, no, actually, I'm trying to remember the timeline here. When did Mr. Driller Drilland come out? Was that 2003? Yeah.

Okay. So, yeah, I moved here and Mr. Drillor G was in the Metrients. on, and I, like, found that and started playing. I was like, oh, yeah, this is really cool. And then Mr. Driller Drilland came out in Japan, and I had an import GameCube because it was orange. My God, it was orange. Spice. There was no orange GameCube in America, so I had that modded.

And so when that game shipped in Japan, I was like, I think I'm going to get that. So I did. And Mr. Drillor, Drilland is a top three GameCube game. I'm going to say that right now. Wow. Maybe top five. It's really good. Really a shame he never came out here.

It is really devastating. Yeah, I'm more familiar with it for its soundtrack by the Great Goshina. I believe they're really an unsung composer. And if you look up their soundtracks, I really recommend Tales of Legendia. That game is not good. But the soundtrack is way better than it ever should have been. Yeah, I specifically sought him out when I was covering TGS and Namca would actually, like, you know, give me interviews with people when I requested them. I started requesting people who were too difficult in this, so they finally just stopped.

But for a while, I was, like, able to get interviews with interesting people. No, Jeremy, you can't interview Pac-Man. He's not real. Quit asking. No, it's more like I asked for the, I kept asking for the guy who designed Rolling Thunder. And finally, they were like, he's a very high-level executive now, and he can't talk to you. He's eating sushi off a naked woman, and that's all he does. I love reading those interviews when you go there because I've been to, I have been on those press days at TGS during TGS, too.

But only I didn't get to interview anybody. But I just, I went out of my way. and I didn't actually interview Goshena on a press day. Like, he actually was out at, you know, TGS itself, and I managed to get them to arrange an interview with me. I always imagine that they just in their, you know, that inverted pyramid that was their old building, that they would just...

It wasn't inverted. It was just a pyramid. And I think they launched Gundams out of it. And then when you would contact him, they'd just dig up a guy. They'd be like, oh, I think we do know that guy. And they'd just go to some secluded corner of the building. Like, there he is.

and just roll them over to you. That happened a couple of times, but yeah, it eventually got out of like to a point where I was like, well, I've run out of people that I'm familiar with. But Goshenau was one of my favorite interview experiences just because it was a really hot day because, you know, Tokyo Game Show and it was offsite at a hotel. So I had to like trek over there in the heat and I stepped into the bathroom to like, you know, towel myself off. I was all sweaty. And there was this dude with like insane hair. like spiked up and dyed blonde and he was in like, you know, cool Japanese game developer outfit instead of being like the blazer with T-shirt. It was like a leather jacket with a

t-shirt and like super distressed jeans that probably cost $1,000. I was like, man, that dude is cool. And he was in there like, you know, patting himself off and trying to make himself look presentable. So then I went to my meeting and that guy steps in. I was like, I've seen you without your game face on. He does have great hair. I just googled it. Yeah. He has amazing hair. I was so jealous. Anyway, so yeah, like his soundtrack is great. He's great. He's a really interesting person.

I think he's still at Namco. He does like Ace Combat and the Tales stuff, but I feel like these are some of his strong. I remember that all of his music is inspired by food. Interesting. Which I think makes him a perfect fit for Mr. Driller because let's talk about what Mr. Driller is now that we've kind of padded around the topic for half an hour. I haven't actually talked about the character yet. We'll get there. Okay. So Mr. Driller is this little dude. He wears baby blue and pink. He's really cute. He's a little guy. And he has a drill. His name isn't even Mr. Driller. It's Sissumu. Sissu. Hori. And that's where the retcon comes in. Mr. Driller is my dad's name. No, wait. It's not.

Anyway, so he is a little guy with a drill. And there are these colored blocks that comprise the ground. You're basically in a well. It's like welteris. And each well is 100 meters deep. And each stage consists of between four. five and, yeah, five and 25 of these 100 meter wells. And each block is one meter tall. So there's like 100 steps that you have to drill through. And your goal is just to reach the bottom. But this is more easily said than done because there are a few different mechanics at work. First of all, there's oxygen. And time, as time goes by, your oxygen meter drops from 100 to zero. When it drops to zero, you die. So you have to collect oxygen capsules on the way down. This is made more complicated by the fact that there are certain of these, like, dark brown wafer blocks that take, like, four, four attacks to break through. Crates, is that what they are?

I thought they were chocolate pieces. They look like chocolate. Everything looks like food. But whatever, they're poison chocolate. When you drill through them, it takes four attacks or four strikes. And when you break through them, it unleashes a poison gas cloud that depletes 20, no, 10% of your oxygen, I think. a capsule restores 20% of your oxygen and once you make it past like the 200 meter mark

pretty much every oxygen capsule is surrounded by these blocks so it becomes a matter of like how do I get the capsule without having to break through the block and that's more easily said than done again because of the block matching mechanic so it's a little bit like you know dig-dug in that you're drilling but then there is a kind of like a puyo-pooh or puzzle fighter element

where all the blocks are different colors and when four or more blocks of the same color come into contact with one another they vanish and unlike DigDug

there's not a naive gravity mechanic it's actual gravity and you know when the supports beneath a block disappear then that block falls and blocks are constantly falling because it's a very fast-paced game so you're trying to avoid being

crushed by these blocks. If a block crushes you, you also lose a life. So there are these two hazards. There's gravity, falling blocks, and oxygen depletion. So these are really the only two factors you have to deal with in the game. But, you know, because it's very fast-paced and very simplistic, like your only ability is to drill or to move left or right, and you can jump up one block high. So it's easy to trap yourself like amidst all those brown crate blocks or, you know, to kind of get carried away with drilling. And as you're drilling, like, every block that you've passed is still accounted for by the game. So you may have passed, like, this very precarious structure 30 meters ago, and some chain

reaction you set off where you are now causes a bunch of blocks to disappear. And all of a sudden, these, you know, these blocks that were 30 meters above you come crashing down from off screen. Yeah. So there's always, like, this surprise. just killed yourself element to Mr. Driller. So like Henry said, it becomes very tense. And, you know, once you start getting to the point where oxygen capsules are almost

impossible to get without sort of carrying brown blocks with you and really strategizing how to make blocks fall from above without crushing you without getting caught up on another block, because that is another mechanic is that when a block falls past another block of its own color, it will stick and adhere and form, you know, create a formation. And that may defy gravity. Like if, you know, if a blue block falls and passes another blue block that's like three blocks off the lowest point of the ground, it's going to stick, you know, three blocks above. So you create these very complex structures and have to spend a lot of, like, you can't really spend a lot of time thinking about how to make the levels work because you don't have that time,

but you have to develop an intuitive sense of how to make it work. So again, really simple game, but there is a lot of kind of complexity that comes out of the interactions and the way the stage elements interact with each other and combine with each other and disappear. And when we say drill,

we do mean that you can only really pop like one color set at a time or one block basically. And then there's like a pause between that action because you can't just drill straight down consistently. You have to like pop each thing one by one and then so there's like you say it's fast pace but there's also that kind of like waiting for that action

to completely. Yeah there is and you know as objects fall they're also falling kind of like at the same gravity as you so you have a chance to react and there's a little bit of forgiveness like if a block falls and you're halfway on the space that it's falling onto

it won't crush you it'll like push you out of the way. So you kind of get stunned for like half a second but you know that is a little bit of I mean, like we said, Indiana Jones dive. But it gives you just enough time to think, like, to see the doom above you. And if you're, oh, damn it. That you could either freeze up or go like, I screwed myself. Or you could, you have half a chance of like, wait, okay, is there any other option?

This way, yeah. Like, it's really easy for some unaccounted for interaction to just totally throw a monkey wrench in a very careful, like, course you've plotted out. And all of a sudden, you're like, I have to drill over to the side really fast. And then that just ruins everything. So there's a lot of time spent in Mr. Driller is sort of like recovering from your own mistakes. And it's so good. It's just turning up the pressure, turning up the heat on you. You know, the deeper you go, the darker the it gets to.

So it's these visual cues that are letting you know, like, this is getting tougher, like you're farther down, but also maybe closer to the goal. And they make it very satisfying every 100 meters you break through this huge massive. land with one drill just explodes and you go fall down to the next layer. Yeah, and the sound effects are really great. There's like this, and then like every two to 300 meters, there's kind of like a, not quite a bonus stage, but it's like a sort of a chance to relax because you go to this area where everything is made of big blocks of cheese. And because the, you know, the contiguous blocks are so large, like you just take a few

actions and it causes tons of stuff to explode. It's only like two colors. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's part of it, too. Like, there's just two colors, and they're, like, really big blogs of it. So you moved that really quickly, and it's easy to recollect a bunch of oxygen. But you do have to be careful because so much stuff is falling so fast that even though those, like, kind of easy breather levels, it's still entirely possible to crush yourself and dive.

And I like that they took the step from the boring dirt in rocks of DigDug to, like you said, like colorful stuff, food style things, candy, candy, cookies, cheese. I love it. That cuteness factor, that's aged very well because everything is hella cute now. Yeah, I mean, this looks like kind of what King Games want to be. Yeah, yeah. It's very cute, but it's also very stylish as a very sleek streamlined style. And you just have to think about it, like here's a boy character, bright pink, looking as cute as can be. this very cute puzzle game.

That's probably also accounts for a lot of the unhappiness around the game. This isn't a manly hero. It's a cute little guy. He's also Dig Dug's Son, who Digg-Dug's a little bit different as we'll go on to your life. This is Dig-Dug Sun? What? All right. So, let's see. That is, I think that's pretty much the basics of the gameplay.

We're going to be Gapaguergues Phaeckyush-tats, always never two people's my life, So now we can, I guess, talk about the characters. We do have Mr. Diller, aka Susumu Hori, and his father, as it turns out, is Dig Dug, aka Taizohori.

And he's still, he wears an outfit in this series that's based on his original outfit, except this time you can see his whole face. And he's a little more grizzle. He's got some facial hair. He is. It's closer to his arcade cabinet design, I'd say. Yeah, but older. Is there any sort of pun in action here with their names? I never knew that.

Oh, great. I mean, in Japanese Reckoning, we would say Hori Susumu. Yeah. It's basically like a sentence. It's like Phoenix Wright characters, right? Oh, yeah. They're all kind of like punny sentence names. Same with.

So what does that mean? Toby Masio. I, geez. Yeah, Susamu is sort of like, oh, God, was it? Like, sort of like continuing on. So Hori is sort of like also like, leaner digging. so it's like digging the whole ad not an expert yet so don't it would have been great if they localize those names because they don't mean anything outside of oh it's just the Japanese name yeah yeah I but whatever I think at that point they most major publishers decided to have a uniform name for every a global name for characters yeah but I it was a shocker to me to find out he was dig Doug son or that he was Taizzo's son And, like, it was such a cool revelation to find out.

And it was something you'd never find out in a Mario game or in other, or if you wouldn't find out Mega Man was the son of whatever. They didn't even super establish it until, like, Mr. Riller G or something, I think. Yeah, I mean, like, one day, one day my friends just, they were way into Mr. Driller before I was, and they explained it to me, like, on a car ride out. I was, like, losing my mind. Like, wait a minute. Mr. Driller isn't called Mr. Driller, and he's DigDug's son, but he's,

Dig-Dug isn't Dig-Dug? He's actually this guy, and he's married. Oh, Jesus. Like, this goes pretty deep. Yeah, I was like, when I found out the Dig-Dug connection, the actual Dig-Dug connection, it was kind of like, oh, okay, because this game reminded me of Dig-Dug. It made me think to Dig-Dug. I was like, it's kind of weird that they made this, like, Dig-Dug-ish game, but they didn't call it Dig-Dug. I wonder what the deal is there.

So then when they kind of retconned it to connect back to Dig-Dug, it kind of made sense. Maybe I guess we should mention now that also Taizo and Asiore are separated or divorced. I think they're separated, not divorced. However you want to translate. So it didn't work out for them. Which I also love to death. Again, this is why I love this so much.

I mean, it is a surprise detail. It's not like a happily ever after thing. No. I think they have a family, but it didn't quite work out. To make this set of characters into a family that is also dysfunctional, And you basically have like these two sons who are like polar opposites of each other. One is like this bright pink. And Taizzo seems like an angry guy.

In one of the games, I figured which one it is where it's like, oh, there's a problem. Get Mr. Drill. He's like, no, get me. I survived the dig-dug incident. I'm the guy. That's the DS one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So you don't really see Kissy that much, like the mom. She's not a playable character. She kind of shows up in the background sometimes. But starting with Mr. Driller 2, I want to say. Yeah, they started introducing new characters. I think in Mr. Driller, too, you could just play as either Susumu or Anna? Yeah, Anna Houghtonmeier. Anna Houghtonmeier, the German driller, a blonde-haired girl, a little older than Susumu,

the number two driller in the world. Susumu is the number one driller. And also, like, his antithesis, because this is like kind of a tomboyish girl character. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. But she plays a little bit differently. She is faster than Susumu, but she uses oxygen more quickly. So she's kind of like an expert mode kind of character, like a more challenging way to play.

So once you get a hang of how the game works with Susumu, then you can play as Anna and kind of go to town. And then with Mr. Driller G, you finally get the full cast. And that showed up in arcades and then on PlayStation 2. No, PlayStation 1. There's a late PS1 game. Wow. Okay, actually, no, now that I think about it, Mr. Driller G came out in, like, I want to say 2001 on PS1. I had a budget game.

Yeah, that was where I was like, oh, okay, now I get the series. Because I'd seen, you know, someone playing on PS1, the original Mr. Driller, and was like, okay, cool. But then Mr. Driller G came out, and there was, it had everything. It had all these characters and it had multiple modes. I think I had the music from Jewelands from it, too. Yeah, it came out first. Yeah. And it's just a great game.

We know what the G stands for. Great. Great, okay. And then there's Mr. Driller A for Ace, and Mr. Driller 2 for 2. Oh. Yeah, it all means rail. Yeah, exactly. God damn, Ray.

I was thinking the exact same thing. All right. You're two for two on Simpsons' references before me. So let's see. Who else is there? Mr. Drillor G introduced Easy Mode, which is Hollinger Z, which is a robot. He's kind of slow, but he uses oxygen slowly, and he has the special ability to not die. Oh, that's very useful.

If a rock falls on, or a block falls on him, the first time it happens, he won't die. He, like, detaches part of his robot body to, like, hold the block up and escapes out. So you basically get a free life. So instead of having three lives to beat the game, you get six. You're allowed a screw up. It's not quite like having a new life because, you know, the other big threat in the game is running out of oxygen. And you can, you know, separate your lower half of Hollinger Z and still have, like, 3% oxygen and die a second later, but

at least you do have that kind of fighting chance if you screw up. So it's a really good character for our beginners. I wonder if that was in response to people feeling it was a little too, some people being turned off by the challenge of this super cute game that they see a cute game and then they're like,

man, this is a kick of my ass. Like, no doubt, no doubt. This game is emasculating on mini levels. How dare they? So then there's also Pucci the dog, who I guess is kind of a little bit of an easy mode. Where is Pucci now? What's he doing? I really want to know. He returned to his home planet.

Okay. Damn it. And died. But that's like, but Yoshi had already had a Poochee like 10 years earlier. It's Pucci P-U-C-H-I, which means like, peteet, doesn't petite? Yeah. So it's a little bit of a pun. But his ability is that instead of jumping up one block, he can jump up two blocks.

So it's a lot easier to get around the stage with him. You know, like a dog. Yeah, as dogs are really known for moving two blocks. Yes, I agree. Then, of course, there is Taizzo, the original dig-dug. He moves very slowly, yet he consumes oxygen quickly. But when he drills, like he's really quick at drilling. I like to think that's just because he's a chain-smoking old man.

Yeah, the exact same thing. Definitely, I mean, yeah, this was made in Japan where smoking is still pretty much in vogue. Two packs a day, at least. Or at least, or he's just not used to it. because he didn't go that far down in dig-dug. Well, he's an old man, too. But that he drills better than everybody else until. But see, we wouldn't even think of that

if it weren't for these great characterizations. Yeah. Okay, and then Ataru is like even more of an expert mode than Anna. Ataru is Susumu's brother. He's the proto man. Yeah, he's very much the proto man. He's the older brother who's very gloomy and resentful

and probably hates his dad. But he moves really quickly. and burns through oxygen really quickly. And apparently, if you're really, really good, you can unlock his moon rabbit, Usagi, which I've never been able to do, but there's a secret character in some of the games who is a, like, a weird-looking black space rabbit.

Weird. So there you go. And that is the cast of Mr. Driller. And now you know how it all fits together. It's quite a family they have, yeah. I mean, is there a competition between the two brothers? I think it's more like a competition on Ataru's side. I don't know if Susumu necessarily.

Sumu's kind of like a little bit spacey and kind of weird. I mean, that's classic rival structure in Japanese story. I think one rival cares way more than me. He's the rioga to Susumu's Romo. I think Susuma has like the least personality. He's just like, I'm the Genki character. I'm full of energy. Basically.

Kind of. Go get him. He's a little bit. He's like cocky, but not in an arrogant way. It's kind of hard to describe. He's, like, very self-confident, but kind of, like, a little bit spacey. Anyway, yeah, I mean, there's not that much characterization to these games. It's pretty goofy and frivolous, but it's there, and every character kind of has a personality to sort of compliment their play style.

Mr. Driller had a really kind of rocky localization history with America. Like, you know, Mr. Driller, one, came to Dreamcast. and Game Boy Color and PlayStation 1, but then Mr. Driller 2 didn't make it over, like Mr. Driller G didn't come over, Mr. Driller 2 didn't come over until, like I said, 2005 or 2006 on Game Boy Advance. It was released in Japan in, like, 2001.

Yeah, it was like, with that, and one of the Kloa games came out really late here in the U.S. It's really bizarre. Backfilling. And we never got Drilland for GameCube, And the games that we did get always had a lot of content stripped out. Mr. Driller Drillor Drill Spirits was an early, maybe a launch DS games. It was a year after year.

Okay. It was pretty early in the DS's life. It was, I think, within the first few months. In Japan, that had a bunch of extra modes. In America, it was just like all the extra modes, anything that involved any sort of localization was stripped out. And we just got like the basic game. I didn't realize at the time. And so I reviewed it, I think, for one up and was like, oh, okay, this is cool.

It's good to have Mr. Dr. I like this game, gave it a good score. And then, I think Christian Nutt revealed the fact that, oh, actually, the Japanese version had Dristone mode and a bunch of other stuff. And then I was angry because I gave the game a better score that it served. Another journalist misinforming the public, Jeremy. That's me. That's why I get paid the big bucks. Yeah, I mean, the core game was good, but yeah, that stuff.

It should docked it. Why didn't Namco of America dislike this series? I don't think they disliked it. I think, well, I think Americans generally disliked it. And they just didn't want to put a lot of. They didn't want to put a lot of, invest a lot of resources into it. You saw the Namco kind of doing this at the time with games. Nightmare of Druaga was another one where, you know,

it's a roguelike based on Tower of Druaga. And every stage has like two kind of elaborate text hints to help you find essential items that you need in order to complete the game. And in the U.S. version, they didn't include those. They just took all the text hints out. So good luck. No wonder I bounced off that game. I like the game, but you need a guide for that one.

And it's not because it's a badly designed game. It's because Namco, US, was just like, yeah, who cares? They don't actually know what drug was. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's, I prefer to think that a business hates something instead of made an economic decision. No, indifference is much more of a motivating thing. Henry taking the fan boy stance. Exactly.

No, they hate you personally, and that's why. Very anti-consumer. Just like everybody there to get me. So what are these bonus modes? I want to talk about Dristone because it's really good. It turns the game into kind of an adventure. It sounds like a nasal spray if you're a contest. It does, it does.

One spray of Dristone. Yeah, Japan has a weird history with the word drill. There's an Xbox game called Dreeho, which is supposed to be like doodio. It's like, they only like the first half of the word drill. So I guess it's Dree Stone, not Drillstone. Who knows? But, okay, so this takes the Mr. Driller core game and turns it into something kind of like, I wouldn't say an RPG, but it becomes turn-based. Like when you drill through a stone, you use 1% of your oxygen.

You don't lose oxygen as time goes down. And as you dig around, you'll unlock, you'll uncover objects that you can collect. And these become inventory items. and they have different effects. Like, you know, one of them might be an oxygen capsule that you can use at your discretion rather than having to collect as you go. Actually, it's been a while since I've played, but maybe Dree Stone Mode doesn't have oxygen capsules. Maybe you have to, like, collect them as items, and that's part of the challenge. But there are some that can change the color of blocks surrounding you to all be the same color.

Yeah, there's just a lot of different effects and different items you can get. And so it becomes a slower, more strategic game. And that appeared first in Mr. Driller G. Mr. Driller Ace, which launched only for Game Boy Advance, and only in Japan, only came to Japan because it was a much more complex game. The entire game was based around Dree Stone Mode. And it was called, the subtitle was the mysterious bacteria. Oh, bacteria.

It was like bacteria. Oh, that's awesome. And there was, like, interaction with the Game Boy Advance link to GameCube, so you could, like, collect bacteria in Dris and Mr. Driller Ace and then take them into Drilland or something. I don't know exactly. I never did that. Namco was super, only Nintendo liked that more than Namco did, the GameCube and GBA connector. Yep. Well, there's always that Pac-Man connection, Pac-Man versus Pactaria.

Anyway, that was a disappointment. So the core game there is entirely based around the Drillstone, Draystone Adventure mode. And there is like the standard Mr. Driller mode, but it's kind of like a side game. It's not really the point of Mr. Driller Ace. And so that's a really good one that just like completely vanished. But definitely Mr. Driller Drilland is the crown jewel of the series. I mean, maybe someone would disagree. Ray, do you disagree?

Well, I guess we can talk about it later. But I'd only disagree because while it is great, and I will probably, agree with everything you say after this point. It's not the first game you should play if you're just introduced in Mr. Riller. Not necessarily a first game, but I feel like it is the sort of the culmination of everything that Mr. Driller is about. If someone's listening to this and thinking about playing the game and then here's us about

to be very effusive about Drilland, I think this should play one of the other ones first. Yeah, no, I would say if you're going to just pick one up, get the DSI game, I think Drill Trill Trilogy. Dill Trilogy. That seems like very difficult to get that. till you drop. I mean, DS, no way,

you can't, you can buy DSI games on 3DS? Only some of them moved over. I think that's one that did. Okay, that's good. I was thinking it was a lot of time. But by all means, tell us about Drilland.

Okay, so Mr. Drilland, as the title suggests, takes place in a theme park built around, basically Mr. Driller, around Susumu. It's like a celebration

of this little kid who saves the world by digging into cookies. and so the sort of surrounding metaphor for the game is like a, you know, a theme park. And there is like some sort of plot with people who are like scheming to take over the plot and conquer the world or something. The park and take over the world. The plot of land. Yes, the plot of land on which you're digging.

But basically, instead of like playing as a standard Mr. Driller, like save the world game, you're playing through different events as different characters. And there is kind of like the standard Mr. Driller mode. But then there are all the little side modes that take place around different characters. And they're great. They're so good. They're all, like, different adaptations of the Mr. Driller concept. So, and a lot of them are references to other things.

There is the hole of Druaga, I guess, you know, as opposed to the tower. It's the hole you're digging down. But also, you know, in Japanese. It's whole, yeah, toe, hole, yeah, okay, yeah. Oh, very clever. Yeah, I'll tell you what, Namco. Okay, so Holoduraga is the most kind of predictable one. It's basically Dree Stone Mode.

And you play as Anna, who takes the role of Gilgamesh, and she's trying to rescue Susumu, who is Princess Key. And so, yeah, you got that tomboy, effeminate boy thing going on again. See, I love it. And, yeah, so it's Driesone mode. You're collecting items trying to work your way down the hole of Diorogah. to save Princess Susumu. Then there's Drindy Adventure, which is like drill and indie.

Yeah, it's Indiana Jones. And with this one you take on the role of Taizzo, you can only play as Taizzo because he's like the grizzled middle-aged guy like Indiana Jones. And this one is more, it almost reminds me of Boulder Dash a little bit. Like it's not so much about drilling down, but like working your way through stage. And as you drill, you set up traps like rolling boulders and spikes and flame gouts and things like that, flame geysers. Because, yeah, that's all you would really think of with Indiana Jones. Like, that's the first thing you'd think of.

Right. There's no drilling on a mine cart, though. No crying in baseball, no drilling on a mine cart. Then there's Star Driller, which apparently is a reference to Star Trigon, which is kind of an auxiliary. Is that even the same year? I remember. Let's see. Star Trigon.

Oh, I forgot to write that down. I think StarTrigan was around the same time. Yeah. Yeah. So that's like an auxiliary game kind of connected to Mr. Driller, but not directly. StarTrigan was Aut2. Okay, so Mr. Drillard Drilland, I think, was 2002 also. Yep, yep.

Yeah, so a contemporaneous reference. Anyway, this one is kind of like Star Driller is like the standard mode, except there are these little square star blocks, and they disappear on their own. like as you're drilling they'll like sit there for a second and then after like three seconds they vanish and you know that causes gravity cascades and chain effects and things like that so the level is constantly shifting around you and you can't really control how that happens so you have to be really mindful and then finally there is horror night house where you play as a taru and you're drilling through a haunted house and you use holy water that you collect to crystallize ghosts that are

chasing you. They sort of inhabit the blocks. Yes. And you have to like inject it into the blocks to destroy it. And so that's kind of like more of the turn-based tree stone style also. Yeah. And then there is like the standard mode and you can play that and do like the 500 meter, 1,000 meter, 2,000 meter.

And then when you beat the beat all four of the, or like I guess get to certain stages of the game, there's a parade. And there's a great little song with children singing. It's like Gamera. Yeah, it sounds very much like Like the lyrics of the song

or something about our one true dream, something, something. Yeah. Poro, hoorie, garb, on the floor, hitty, looked- być- Looks-en- Brady attorneys,

a smile- internships, Hordi, hosrishabye, sure, of peace, country, we're're, ivity, with the world, and d'rt,

join, nice-s you know. T'i, T'Ri, T'i, shoot-and-half-a-l-d-lid, ta'-l-h pueden, t'-h-h 두�.

Yeah, I mean, so this game, it is a, it's a reworking of an existing concept, but I feel like this era for Namco, maybe 2002 to 2005, they're like, let's do experimental stuff. So this is the same era that Katamari Damasi came out of and things like that. I feel like it was a very, very short-lived era for this company. I mean, they still publish good things, but in terms of what they do, it's pretty much just like anime games. They hadn't been absorbed by Bondi yet. Oh, when did that happen? Like a year later? Yeah, it was pretty soon after, but...

After the experimental period, I think. This was like their, yeah, they're like... This is why they had to be absorbed by Bondi, I'm sure, because they were doing like these crazy artful games that everyone was like, I don't know. I love them for it. Yeah, when I was seeing the description of this, I didn't know the console first.

I was like, oh, this sounds like a mini-game collection that would be on the DS. So that was the 2002 GameCube game. It was like, whoa. But these aren't mini games. Like, they're substantial. You put them all together, and it is a meaty game. I can understand what he means, though, because you look at the presentation of this theme park thing,

and it just sort of suggests, like, mini-games. Well, I guess it's more akin to, like, Kirby Superstar, perhaps, of, like, full. I'd say, yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, yeah, that's kind of, like, to me, sort of the pinnacle of Mr. Driller. But there have been other games since Mr. Driller online, Mr. Driller W, which was for We. And I don't really know anything about those. Almost the same, though.

Yeah, it's like they stopped kind of doing new things with the games after Mr. Driller drill land. Yeah. But if you want to play sort of the definitive Mr. Driller game, according to the creator of the series, it's also apparently the final game in the Mr. Driller series. He said, Hideo Yoshizawa told me, like, that Mr. Driller Drillor drill shall you drop would be probably the final Driller game because he felt it was the most complete. it was like, it had everything that he thought you needed in a driller game. Yeah. I have trouble either accepting or believing that. It might have been something he told himself to feel better about the fact that there wouldn't be more sequels.

So Hadeo Yoshizawa, that's the name of the guy, right? Did we talk about what he's done? He was the designer for the NES version of Ninja Guidon, and he also designed Klanoa. So it kind of brings it back around. And also, like, okay, so I'm looking. his bio now. Mighty Bomb Jack director. Also, we brought this up in the Secret of Mana episode which you might have heard by now, but he is the director

of, or he was part of the team that made Radia Senki, which was sort of like the NES Secret of Mana before its time. So yeah, a really interesting guy. I didn't realize that was him. Yeah, no, I didn't realize that either. I remember reading your interview with him where I was as shocked, I think, as you were, of finding out that he did Ninja Guyton. Yeah, I wanted to talk to him about his techno stuff, but I was there on grace of Namco, so I was like, I'm going to push my limit a little bit with Ninja

Guidon and then let the rest go. For Wii Klanoa, I'm guessing? It was around the same time. No, it was actually after. It was, man, that Wii Klanoa game, it felt like it was the last chance they were going to give Klanua, but they gave it a shot. They did. And he said, like, well, Klanua is done because no one bought the Wii game.

At least I didn't redesign Kloa, like they threatened to. Meanwhile, they still made a bunch of Kautamari games. Oh, yeah. The other Cookie series Maybe it's for the best. Yeah, well Yeah, anyway, so

Dig, sorry, drill till you drop is notable for being the first time that they actually friggin bothered to localize the Dree Stone mode. So if you're curious to know what that's all about,

it's on DSI, you can play it, it's probably super cheap like six bucks or something. So that's a great place to jump in. It has, you know, like the standard mode

and also the Dreestone mode, and it's as good as you're going to get as an official localization of the Mr. Driller series. I would say also, you know, if you just want to go really retro, like the original game is really good and I still am like really partial

to the Game Boy version or the Wonder Swan version. Guess what? They're pretty much identical. That one's a little tough to play these days. Yeah. Either way, I mean, the portable ones in general, I think it's a pretty good thing.

It is a series that lends itself to portability. I'd really, I'd love to see them do this on Switch because you could, you know, do the vertical orientation. What are you done? Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. You've just disappointed everybody. Now I'm going to leave extra depressed.

Oh, sorry. Well, Namco, if you're listening, please. Anyway. Anyway, so there's one other game I want to talk about. I guess we can skip Star Trygon because it's not really that connected. I played the iPhone version. It's like DigDug, too. I like the concept, but it's just like, it's not great in action.

It's not too much to it. And it looks cheap. The game itself just looks cheap. And it's not fun to look out. So, yeah. It's just a bad port. Yeah. But the last game to talk about, actually, you know,

we kind of have to step back in time to 2005. And that is Dig-Dug Digging Strike for the DS, which is the one time that this canon all came together and they combined Dig-Dug and Mr. Driller into a single game. I like that part of it. And it is weirdly, it's like the spiritual successor to Dig-Dug 2 of all the games to create a connection to. They said Dig-Dug 2.

That's what I like so much about it, There are so few games where you can really combine sequels in such a way. Digdog and Digdog 2 really work, I think. Yeah, of course you can sort of combine these in a way that works. No, I mean, I'm not saying it's bad. It's just like, no, I'm really talking to Bob. Okay, okay, okay. Let's go off about this.

And then there's Sonic argument I see in my future. Well, I mean, I feel like this game didn't make much of an impact because, like, I wasn't going to go and buy this for the episode, but to play it. But I couldn't find, like, a good video of this game. I saw, like, an IGN trailer. from 2005, guess what that looked like. Yeah, I mean, that game kind of predates much in the way of internet video. Oh, right, but I mean, like, people, like, if I want to look up a

DS game now, there'll be, like, nine play-throughs by different people screaming on top of it. But for this game, I couldn't find any good video, but I do remember, my take on the game was I game-flight it, as I did back in the day. And I was like, oh, this is cool, but I felt like it was, it was asking me to do too much in these levels.

And I kind of just sent it back within the hour. I was just like, I'm not going to do this. Yeah. Wow. Didn't pass the Mackey test. Harsh. Should we describe it a little bit? Oh, yeah, yeah. Please, I'll go for it, or Ray.

Great. It is basically a mix of DigDug 1 and 2 because you start off, first of all, it's about Taiso having to go and save these islands overrun by monsters, much like he did in DigDug 2. So you start off basically on the surface of the island, and you can, the pegs that were small in DigDug 2 are now these giant pillars. And so what you do is you go in these holes which go into this underground section and you play like basically like DigDug 1. But what you have to do is dig around and make a path for these giant pillars so that they can fall through the ground and create the fissures that you would in DigDug 2. And also do that smart enough so that you don't, you know, sink yourself when you're underground as well. So that's basically it. It does get a little bit methodical because you do have to plot around this.

giant island and do this four or five times. I will say, right, I like the idea. I think it means well, but to actually, I want to add a Simpsons reference because you've added too many. It feels like, it feels like tethered swimming. Like this doesn't feel right. Like something about it feels off. Like it feels like it's like there's too much labor involved to have the effect you want.

You have to do too much to lower those spikes into the ground. That's what I didn't like about it. I think it's a really noble endeavor. But yeah, it doesn't completely work, I think, in execution. And also, the game is kind of cheap, kind of cheap looking, feeling. Like, despite being in the Mr. Driller universe, it has none of the style of the other driller games at all. And it's just kind of, the music shit.

A lot of Namco's games from the early EDS era look really bad. It's too bad because the third point I want to make is that, again, they kind of squandered the opportunity for characterization of playing with the driller family a little bit. Like, okay, the story starts off, like, uh, uh, uh, Susumoo's. is super famous. He and Anna are really famous and Taizzo basically just turns into like this petty, jealous father which really

got somebody on... Susumu, get in the robots. Somebody on this team had like they're working at their father issues with these games. No, I see it again, I love that to death about this whole thing. So it's like the madmen of video game development. So the island nation of Horynesia calls up and they're

asking, they I forgot about that they did. They demand the assistance of Mr. Driller Sussamu, but Taiso's like, well, no, I'm here. I did the dig-dug incident. I'm great. It's like, no, no, we really want Sussimu. It's like, no, screw you. I'm going to go save you. Here I go. And then he goes and does this. But again, it's basically just that. And like the other driller characters don't really show up that much, except there's like a special ending where Masio comes in and Taiso is now the popular one and having girls swam around him.

But then Masio becomes a jealous wife and drags him away. Did she have a rolling pin in her hand? Figuratively. Carlers in her hair. Yeah. She had her a gun from Byrd Duke or something. But, yeah, it's like, again, you just wasted this opportunity to really play with this family dynamic. I get that it's just a game for kids.

And, of course, her cute characters. And there's not much to them, but it's just like. I could get them wanting to. There's a lore there. I want to explore so much. But I could see them wanting to have kind of a fresh start for people who would just be buying it. Then again, if you're trading on the dig, Doug Brand did in the 2000.

And the Baraduke connection? I mean, you might as well just go all in it. You know, Ray, if all this happened 10 years earlier, I am almost impulsive there would have been an RPG with these characters like a Dragon Quest clone or something. I can see it now. I mean, some of the elements of Drilland

kind of feel like proto RPGs. Like it would not be difficult to go that next step. Yeah, when I was just double checking on my phone, I wanted to be sure like, I don't think, speaking of RPGs, like, I don't think either Sussamu or Taiso appear in the Project Cross-Zone games. Oh, but, but I'm afraid you're not entirely correct.

They're not in Project Cross-Zone, but they are... Tyso is in Project Cross-Zone's predecessor, Namco Cross-Capcom. Oh, okay. The PlayStation 2, which never came to the U.S. Was that a strategy RPG or something? It was, yeah, it was basically like Project X-Zone, you know, part zero. Mom and Dad, aren't it? Oh, yeah, because he was in there, okay.

But Susumu's not. Okay. Well, yeah, that's crazy. And Taiso is like, he's like the Bomberman Act Zero version of, yeah, or almost like F0 sort of. Yeah, James McLeod and F0 sort of style. Well, because other than a couple of exceptions, Project Crosszone really only features characters that can be anime-is from Sega, Namcoe, and Capcom. And pretty much, especially for Sega, it's just a dumping ground of like, we don't make games for these people anymore. So let's just put them in here.

I mean, I'm sure it's not a great game, but it kind of broke my heart that I didn't come over because it's like all these popular characters. This can't fail. I mean, freaking Mega Mega Man Volna is on the cover. Well, the craziest thing in Project Cross Zone in the first one and in the second one, they constantly refer back to Namcoe cross Capcom. Like they say, like, well, remember the first time we all met was like, I wasn't there yet. Yeah, those games aren't particularly great. But if you are in it for crossovers and constant references to old games, then you will get all you want and more. It's mediocre gameplay surrounded by fluffy, wonderful fan service.

All you can eat fan service. Just take it all. All right. All right. I do want to read a few letters before we call it a day. Just a couple. We didn't get that many because, you know, DigDug is pretty obscure. Not as much fun.

Excitement is for Zelda. No, for some reason. So for Michael Pianta, my retronauts crew, when I was a kid, the skate rink in my town had it a dig-dug cabinet. It was the only place I ever saw the original cabinet in the wild. I fell in love of the game. It's colors, its wacky enemy designs, and its gameplay. Back then, I felt the game was a bit like Pac-Man if you were allowed to create the maze yourself. As an adult, I now feel like that comparison doesn't make much sense.

Oh, okay. The gameplay is very distinct from Pac-Man. You've got to admit there's a certain visual similarities with those black corridors and brightly colored walls. Maybe it's because I love to draw, but I really enjoyed digging the tunnels and then admiring the shapes and patterns that I'd made when the level was cleared. It's almost like process-oriented art. You don't set out to design an interesting tunnel layout at the start of a dig-dug level, but more often than not, strange shapes just fall out of the process of clearing the sage.

It's one of my favorite classic arcade titles, and I return to it again and again. From Tom Tustanowski. Hi, Retronaut's crew. That's two of them. It's right that way. While I'm admittedly not as familiar with the series as much as I'd like to be, the original dig-dug is one of my favorite games ever. I play it whenever I see it out in the wild.

Dig-Dug factors heavily into the moment I realized I was old. I revisited one of my old arcade haunts a while back. It was mostly redemption and dancing games at the time. They maintained a small room just for classic cabinets. They had a dig-dug, and I gravitated toot immediately. After a few minutes of playing, a pair of little kids strolled up behind me. They said nothing for a moment and just watched me play. One of the kids then broke the silence and my heart.

it's a baby's toy No, what's dig-duggy said with more than a handful of scorn He and his companion left I resigned myself to the notion that I was no longer a young person that day But it was Elijah Wood So he'll get his

From Kevin Bunch I grew up on the Atari 7800 Dig-Dug port But Mr. Driller was where the series really got me The pinball Pete Arcade in Ann Arbor Had a Mr. Driller machine some 15 years ago And a friend and I sank probably close to $6 into it alone the first time we ran into it, sparking an affection for the weird little game.

I haven't really gotten into the sequels with the additional characters and modes, but that original just perfected the pacing and challenge curve. I guess it's not surprising that there weren't many places to go from there. But that's where you're wrong. You need Mr. Drillard Drilland. Well, you've learned something for this podcast. Is that game expensive, Jeremy? Do you know... It's not.

It's pretty like 40 bucks at the most, I would say. I'm Ken Hoyt. I first found Mr. Driller in a roundabout way through its inclusion on the legacy music, Our Podcast, and instantly fell in love with the Ardenton theme. I love the song enough to hunt down the game, eventually settling on Mr. Driller 2 on the GBA, which I loved. It reminds me a lot of Tetra's attack in certain ways, a puzzle game that seems random at first, but through repeated play, you fall into the patterns and rhythm of the game,

and it becomes super fun and mesmerizing, dodging the falling blocks, and constantly digging down. The DS version is also great for all the additions, new characters, and modes, but the GBA one is Mr. Driller at its purest. Legacy Music Hour podcast, one note on that. It's now defunct, but there's like 200 episodes of it. It's really great, and it's mostly super obscure stuff, so it'll introduce the music that you've never heard before. Also, on eBay right now for Drilland,

if you don't want, like, a pristine copy of it, it's in the $20 to $30 range. Just a couple more from Fletcher Arnett, Dirt Dad, and Dig Lad. From a company with such an impressive catalog, Dig Dog, Mr. Driller, are some of my favorite Namco title. ever created. On a system I only bought three games for, one of my GameCube titles was an imported Drilland, and both digging strike and drill spirits are among the games I still own for

DS and slot into a dying system. My secret hope is that any day now will get some portable follow-up to Drilland somewhere with its jaw-dropping spread of modes, or even just a new title in English. Hell, I'd settle for just a single new title that isn't porting G or A again. I can puzzle out the language. And finally, from Peter Kaden. When I was a kid,

I used to play dig-dog on my grandfather's Apple II. I never really understood it. When Mr. Driller came out, I was interested, but I never got to play it until I finally bought drill till you drop. I still don't understand it,

but I had fun. All right, all right. Whoa, here we go. Well, hopefully we helped them. What really struck with me, what really stuck with me is the reviews on Toastyfrog.com. Parish's enthusiasm is infectious.

I want to try a whole of Duraga someday. It sounds awesome. Well, there you go. I'm glad to have single-handedly increased the profile of this series for all of America. I think you account for most of Mr. Driller sales. Probably. All 10,000 of them. I'm much better than Namco's marketing machine when it comes to Mr. Driller.

Namco owes you many more interviews for all that free. They really do. Well, well, this, you know, this conversation has made me, I think I will definitely download drill to you drop when I get home this has rekindled my love of the driller franchise I'm sad that I am here in San Francisco and

flying home tomorrow and don't have a driller game with me I think I might actually download another copy of drill till you drop on my 3DS just to have it all these Japanese companies are putting stuff on steam I say Namco put Mr. Driller in 4K on Steam the crispest

graphics the most amazing cookies all right so anyway that wraps it up for the dig dug Mr. Driller episode. We talked a lot longer than I expected. Yeah. What can I say? I love these games. You didn't factor in me. That's true. That's true.

That's so great. It's just such a weird, quirky little period of history. I'm glad that we tackled this topic. And Ray, Henry, I'm glad you came and brought your knowledge for us. Bob, I'm glad. I'm glad that you showed up out of contractual obligation. Yes. My lawyer will get back to you on that.

It actually made my day to discover that I helped, you know, draw you to the series. That must be happy. You saved my life, probably. At that horrible bank. Okay, well, I'm glad to have helped save your life. Well, yeah, I had forgotten my love of Mr. Driller. It had been buried deep, but this has dug it back up. Okay.

And with that note, we're going away. This has been Retronauts, which you can find at Retronauts.com on iTunes or Unitonauts. com on iTunes or other similar services on the podcast one network and the podcast one app download us, listen to us, and support us on Patreon at retronauts.com slash, oh no, no, no, sorry, patreon.com slash retronauts. I don't know what happens at retronauts.com. Especially if you don't like ads. That is your way to get out of ads.

Exactly. So anyway, you can find me on Twitter as GameSpite and at Retronauts.com where I post stuff a lot. along with other people. Henry? I'm H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. You can follow me there. I also do other podcasts on my own,

including the chronological exploration of the Simpsons, Talking Simpsons. And you can find that at Talking Simpsons.com or Lasertime Podcast.com. But it also has its own Patreon, and you can support me and Bob there via patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. right me i'm on twitter as rdb a a that's about all i got love those drill boys

and you can find me on twitter as bob servo i don't work anymore i think it's stupid but i do the talking simpsons thing with henry so yeah if you like talking simpsons please support us there too i really appreciate it i will run out of money at some point and i want to eat after that point so all right so we are all hungry mouths that need to be fed and hopefully you have enjoyed the words coming from our mouths as we have talked about a game about cookies. So there's like this food mouth theme here. I don't know.

Anyway, dig dog. Mr. Driller, they're great. Go play them. And come back and listen to us some more next week. Thanks. The report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be

out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officer started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others.

The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue. Thank you.