"You had to Fygar the port would be a let-down, but not enough to make you Pooka."

Back when I was still completely enamored of getting a cart for a ported arcade game(man! I'd have to pay five whole dollars to play all these games if my parents hadn't shelled out major cash for this computer, and the arcade game STILL wouldn't let you start on whatever level you liked!) and not terribly worried about being good(I felt I'd matured enough never to blame a computer for my low scores again,) Dig Dug for the Atari 8-bit was one of my favorites. It was even better than the 2600, and you didn't even need to use a cassette tape to load it! The game, with its catchy, tinny themes, flowers on top of the level, dirt level color schemes seemingly inspired by the Houston Astros' uniforms, and the pump you used to blow up monsters, retained its nostalgia until I tried to poke around again. It was tough and a bit repetitive, and the controls weren't much help, so the port wasn't as successful as it could have been. But it's still good for mindless fun.

You start out underground and must dig out passages which help you survive; with your air pump you can fend off monsters, although it takes a few hits to blow up a monster so it bursts, and it shrinks to normal and regains motion if you leave it. In the enemy department you have Pookas, little tomatoes with white goggles, and Fygars, big-headed dragons that breathe fire horizontally but give double points if you shoot them that way. They start off in compartments where they can't reach you directly, but if you wait around, the monsters will move through the dirt(not leaving a tunnel like you do) slowly but with deadly accuracy towards where you are, diagonally if they must, but always reappear when they jump into a tunnel. You can't hit them with pumps but can drop rocks by walking right under them(mega points, but be sure to move out of the way when one totters) to nail monsters below. When you drop two rocks a vegetable, which may be the main source of later-level points, appears; it gets weirder but more valuable on the later rounds. The last monster is smart enough to flee, too, if you knock off his friends. You also get to see the background change, and flowers of varying sizes pop up in the upper right as you do better(big flower = 10 levels.)

The basic easily visible parts in Atari remain from the arcade game, although like the opening theme they are rounded off a bit. That's okay; the 800's processor had its limit. Things start diverging more annoyingly with the controls, though. They don't seem to react very well, with your pump being a bit slow. Since you need precise timing to zap a burrowing monster as he comes from the soil, and your pump doesn't disappear quickly, you are too easily left vulnerable once you anticipate when monsters will hover in and blast your pump slightly early. Turning is often a bit awkward as well, and a slight jiggle under a rock can cause it to fall--it would be nice if you'd have to leave it completely before it fell, or if you were able, with a rock ready to drop, to turn and shoot(stunning monsters) before knocking it over quickly. As it is good timing can wipe out monsters in the soil, but you need to take evasive action to avoid a rock. The other annoying part of the game is that you have to bash the fire button so much you rarely feel as though you outwit the enemy. You just avoided a huge clump of them or got lucky blasting.

While there were some repetitive shooters that came out with very little variety(Zaxxon being one of the few to break this; it helped to have more than two different monsters) and went on the shelf once you'd solved the big box, Dig Dug does manage to change between three soil color themes and, on later levels, after it's cranked up the number of monsters there is a cycle of four levels. This prevents the game from being completely tedious although after you pick up whatever vegetable it is that nets seven thousand points there won't be much variety. By the teen-levels I find myself either escaping towards the top and blasting enemies there(which gives the least points--lower down is better) or trying to leave two monsters so I could drop rocks and get the major payoff of the vegetable. I'd generally have to watch out for being assaulted by burrowing monsters on two sides(they're too fast in tunnels,) or several monsters(which overlap graphically) running at me, making pumping hard, as you always pump the nearest one and it blows up as it gets more vulnerable, covering monsters running behind very well. A decent enough experience when you've got the adrenaline going, and it's fun to wait for the last monster to try to exit the screen and shock him, but I usually find myself feeling dumb no matter how I lose a man.

Unfairness aside, though, Dig Dug is just the sort of mindless fun you can expect from an earlier system. With the choose-level option you can go for a high score or just for a big challenge. Although the later levels get repetitive and don't allow for merry chases(i.e. find a good spot and start with your air pump) I find getting the vegetable on any one level as much a point of honor as its parallel in Pac-Man. Perhaps its huge flaw is that levels pass by so quickly, and the monsters, though more able, are too predictable. Unlike Pac-Man, where one may go off on a tangent or two may split up to follow you, monsters in Dig Dug just time their beelines, there are a few huge fire fights you can't fully see, and your fate is decided. However, Dig Dug had some really neat ideas(dropping a rock on opponents, shooting them several times, many ways to end a level, level markers a nice part of the background in the field of play) that make it stand out today.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/14/01, Updated 06/20/02