Mr. Driller Drill Spirits

"A fun arcade-style game"

Mr. Driller is an arcade-style series that spawned from Dig-dug. The games use bright colors and happy-go-lucky characters in the fast paced series. The games have popped up on various consoles, including GameBoy, Dreamcast, Playstation, and now, the Nintendo DS. Is Mr. Driller's latest escapade a game that should simply be passed by?

The developers had a strange urge to try putting a story into the Nintendo DS edition. Various Drillers have gone on vacation and the main character, Susumu, has to find them. Why? Who knows? Just use your imagination. The members of the family can be found at the bottom of the six different courses, which include America, Egypt, India, China, Japan, and the Driller Lab. Once a course is completed, the character being used by the player will converse with the character found. The dialogue of the player character will change, but not the other. This sometimes causes the conversation to stray away from any sense at all. Luckily, all we want out of Mr. Driller is some fun playtime, not a novel.

Drill Spirits still follows the basic structure of the previous Mr. Driller games. The player begins atop a stage with nothing but a drill. The goal is to reach the bottom. To do this, various colored blocks must be drilled through. These blocks come in all sorts of shapes and colors. However, brown X-Blocks prevent a simple straight-down path. These devilish blocks take multiple drills to go through and will deplete twenty percent of the character's air supply. In order to regain air that is lost as time passes, air capsules must be snatched while going down into the pit. The final concern, and perhaps the most important, is the danger of falling blocks. A block atop the noggin is death, so learning to dodge the debris is vital. Blocks of the same color will latch together and, if there are four or more interlaced, vanish. The constant fear of being crushed, the desperate search for an air capsule, trying to keep speed up, and dodging X-Blocks produces a sweat-causing panic. Welcome to the world of Mr. Driller.

In Mission Driller, the story mode, there are six courses to conquer to unlock five different characters. The stages vary in length, starting at three hundred miles and ending at a whopping two thousand miles. Luckily, the different characters each have different attributes that are suiting to the different lengths. While figures such as Anna, Taizo, and Ataru use up air quickly and drill quickly, other characters such as Puchi and Holinger-Z have special traits, such as a higher jump or endurance. When in doubt, the well-balanced Susumu can get the job done. This mode is fun to do whether there are ten minutes or ten hours set aside.

A new mode included in this edition is Pressure Driller. In this mode, an evil scientist drops a giant drill machine into a pit with evil intentions to kill the Driller. Why does he hate the Driller family? Who knows? But in any case, the machine must be destroyed for victory. Power capsules appear in the course, which build up an attack. Once a special latch has been opened on the machine, a fireball can be shot with the X button. The amount of damage necessary to stop the device varies with the difficulty selected. Though there are only two stages at first, more can be unlocked after their completion. Pressure Driller is certainly a fun, new twist on an old formula.

The Mr. Driller series has long been a difficult series almost inaccessible to newbies, but Drill Spirits has created a way to get everyone involved in the Nintendo DS version. There is now a Driller Store in which items can be purchased for Mission and Pressure modes. Whether it is extra lives, a faster drill, or extra endurance, these items make the game significantly easier for everyone to play. However, when items are used, high scores will not be recorded. This allows hardcores their chance to shine. Though a system of reducing points by the quality and quantity of items used would have been preferred, this is another welcome feature to the series.

The final mode is that of a time trial. It consists of a few short courses that have to be completed in the time allotted. Clocks can be picked up to reduce the time, which quickly becomes an absolute necessity. The later stages introduce items that flip the screen, cause certain blocks to appear, and other interesting effects. It would have been quite lovely to see these in the other modes, which is a bit of a disappointment. However, that does not stop this mode from being a quick and fun challenge.

The bells and whistles of Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits are purely average. The blocks are colorful, as are the characters. The entire bright and kiddie style seems ironic in such a challenging game; one must wonder if it was intended to make adults ashamed at defeat. However, the mood the graphics set is still quite pleasing, though not using the powers of the Nintendo DS to their full extent. The audio side of Drill Spirits is also of a bright and cheery theme. The blocks pop as the player drills to a cheery beat. The voice acting for the characters is almost as bad as the script, however.

Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits is not a very deep game. There is not a giant load of features and courses and the touch screen control method will never be used. It is, however, a fast-paced arcade game that is fun to play for a few minutes or a few hours. The new characters and modes work well to enhance the Mr. Driller name, as does the fun multiplayer mode. While most people flock to the flashier Nintendo DS titles, those who want a solid, entertaining game to play on the go should not look any further.

9 Gameplay
This is classic Mr. Driller with some neat new twists, but it would have been nice to see the features of the DS used in places other than the menus.

7 Graphics
These bright and happy colors are easy on the eyes, but do not push the Nintendo DS powers at all.

7.5 Sound
The tunes are catchy and the sound effects are cute, but the voice acting is terrible.

8.5 Lifespan
This is a very addictive game with medals to earn, courses to unlock, and characters to discover. Multiplayer helps, too.

Closing comment:
Though not deep or revolutionary, Drill Spirits is great fun for anyone seeking some arcade action.

The Verdict: 8.2

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/07