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(More customer reviews)I grew up during the 80's so Dig Dug swallowed many quarters. Either I have become much better or this game has become much easier. Seems like full price is too much to charge for a game that is so simplistic it's less than an 8MB download.
For people who haven't heard of Dig Dug (I'm old, *sob*) it's a cartoonish arcade game with a strong resemblence to Nintendo's Mario titles. You are stuck in a giant mound of dirt that takes up almost the entire screen but strangely that doesn't seem to be much of a problem for you. You can dig in any direction almost as fast as you can walk through an already dug tunnel and you'll collect a small amount of points for doing so.
Also in the tunnel are Pookas and Fygars. I forget which is which but I think the Pookas are the ones that look like fat kids and the Fygars look like little dragons. These creatures are trying to attack you but they can't dig the way you can. Instead they change into ghosts where they can float in any direction but at a slower speed than you can move; at least in the early levels. Once back in a tunnel they change back into their regular shape and can move slightly faster than you can.
To defend yourself, you carry a standard air pump that you use to pump up a single creature until it explodes (yes, the drugs were good then). You can only pump up one at a time, so if two are chasing you one can get you while you are busy pumping up the other. You also need to beware of the Fygars as they can breathe dragon fire, but only horizontally, not vertically. Blowing up each creature gets many more points than digging through the dirt and that becomes the main focus of each level. The max points comes from digging underneath a rock so it wiggles for a second and drops. If you time it right, it'll squash an enemy as it falls. There are also increasing bonuses in the center of the screen, similar to the cherries in Pac Man, that appear for a very short time.
So that's the game in a nutshell. Clear out all the baddies, rinse and repeat at a slightly increased difficulty until you lose all your lives. That's all it took to entertain us old folks back in the 80's. This is why I think Namco is being greedy expecting full price for such an old title, even if it is a classic. The "enhanced" mode just changes the graphics a little bit as far as I can tell, nothing revolutionary. You can also see the total amount of dirt dug and other silly stats. It might be a challenge if there were an online leaderboard you could compete against but the game doesn't have that. Personally, I'd wait until Namco Museum 50th Anniversary Collection goes on sale.
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