Most maze games of 1982 handed the player a maze. Dig Dug handed over a spade. Its hero starts at the surface and digs his own tunnels down through four layers of earth, while round, sunglass-wearing Pookas and fire-breathing green Fygars wait in pockets underground. He fights back with an air pump: a few presses inflate a monster until it bursts. Video Games reported in August 1982 that Atari had just announced it. “Created by Namco, it is Atari’s first license of a coin-operated game, breaking a decade-long, steadfast in-house R & D policy.”
Fast facts
- Developer: Namco, 1982; manufactured in America by Atari under licence.
- Enemies: Pookas, and Fygars, which breathe fire sideways.
- Weapons: an air pump, and loose rocks.
- Home versions: Atari 2600 and Atari computers (Atari); Commodore 64 and other computers (Atarisoft); Famicom (Namco, 1985); Game Boy (Namco).
- Sequel: Dig Dug II, set on islands that sink into the sea.
Pump and rocks
The pump is aimed the way the digger faces, and its hose only reaches a short way. JoyStik’s strategy guide of November 1982 spelled out its limits. “It takes several pumps to explode a Pookah or Fygar. If you stop pumping too soon, the monster will deflate and survive.” While the hose is attached to one monster, a second one can slip straight through it, so the trick is to let go and pump the nearer one. A monster pumped once or twice is stunned, and the digger can walk through it until it deflates.
Rocks pay better. Dig under one, step aside, and it falls on whatever is below, including the digger if he lingers. Videogaming Illustrated printed the scale in February 1983: 1,000 points for one monster under a rock, 2,500 for two, then 4,000, 6,000, 8,000, 10,000, 12,000 and 15,000 for eight. Its author, Chris Ochsenkiel, said his advanced patterns dropped a single rock “on at least six or seven monsters”. Dropping two rocks in a round brings out a bonus vegetable in the middle of the screen for ten seconds, worth from 400 points for a carrot to 8,000 for a pineapple. In rounds 16 and 17 the bonus is a ship from Namco’s own Galaxian.
Depth matters too. A Pooka is worth 200 points in the top layer of earth, 300, 400, and 500 at the bottom. A Fygar is worth the same when attacked from above or below, and double when pumped from the side, the way it breathes fire: from 400 to 1,000 points.
The monsters do not stay put. They walk the tunnels the player has dug, and when they want to reach him they turn into ghostly eyes that drift through solid earth. When only one is left, it runs for the surface to escape, and the strategy guides advised waiting on the surface for fleeing Fygars as the round ended. Videogaming Illustrated noted that the round counter goes back to zero after round 99.
The music plays only while the digger is moving. Nintendo Magazine System singled it out in 1993, praising the Game Boy version for keeping “small touches such as the music stopping when you stop moving, and the flowers planted each round”.
Reviews and conversions
The home versions came from Atari. Video Games reviewed the Atari computer cartridge in November 1983. It found the movement locked to an invisible grid, so the digger “won’t actually change direction until he hits an intersection”, and thought “the morals of Dig Dug may be a bit hazy”, but called the game “wonderfully addictive” and its soundtrack, “featuring the infectious Dig Dug theme”, wonderful. In Britain Computer and Video Games reviewed the Atari 2600 version at £29.99 in March 1984. Its reviewer had “always felt that the man who invented a game which involves sticking an airline into a defenceless creature and then blowing it up until it explodes was a prime case for the League Against Cruelty to Aliens”, but expected it to be “popular with maze game fans everywhere”. Atarisoft, Atari’s label for other companies’ machines, advertised Dig Dug for computers including the Commodore 64, VIC-20, TI-99/4A, IBM PC and Apple II.
Namco made its own Famicom version in 1985, and later a Game Boy version that added a new game alongside the original. Nintendo Magazine System rated it highly: “It’s immediate, challenging, and absorbing.”
Taizo Hori
The digger was later given a name, Taizo Hori. Dig Dug II (1985) took him to islands, which he sinks into the sea. In 2006 Retro Gamer, reviewing the Nintendo DS game Dig Dug: Digging Strike, noted that it “officially reveals that Mr Driller is in fact Taizo’s son”: Susumu Hori, the hero of Namco’s Mr. Driller puzzle games.
Sources
- Video Games vol. 1 no. 1, August 1982, p. 26: Atari announces Dig Dug, its first licence of another company’s coin-op.
- JoyStik vol. 1 no. 2, November 1982, pp. 50–53: “Dig Dug: a game to respect”, strategies by Doug Mahugh (the pump, the “15 x 15 lattice”, rocks, fleeing Fygars, passing through inflated monsters).
- Chris Ochsenkiel, “How to inflate your foes and your ego”, Videogaming Illustrated, February 1983, pp. 48–50: points for Pookas and Fygars by layer and direction, rock bonuses, the vegetable table, extra lives, round 99.
- Video Games vol. 1 no. 6, March 1983, p. 47: tips (more points for a horizontal attack on a Fygar; Fygars turn white before they breathe fire).
- Video Games vol. 2 no. 2, November 1983, p. 56: review of the Atari computer version.
- Computer and Video Games issue 29, March 1984, p. 53: Atari 2600 review (£29.99).
- Compute! issue 43, December 1983, p. 45: Atarisoft advertisement.
- Nintendo Magazine System issue 5, February 1993, p. 34: Game Boy review.
- Retro Gamer issue 28 (2006), p. 84: Dig Dug: Digging Strike review (Taizo Hori; the islands of Dig Dug II; Mr Driller as Taizo’s son).
- Wikipedia, “Dig Dug” (web, secondary): the Famicom release of 1985. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dig_Dug