Dig Dug, a Namco classic

In the inevitable shadow of the legendary 1980s Pac-man, Dig Dug is another of Namco's great classics from the early 1980s. An arcade of pure stock that presented us with an apparently simple objective (to defeat all the enemies on screen), but which ended up being an odyssey in more advanced stages.

It is a classic that whenever possible the current Bandai Namco rescues it in one of its multiple compilations, including, of course, the first cartridge of the Evercade portable console. And the truth is that I want to pay tribute to him.

Dig Dug is one of those arcade games that perfectly reflects an unforgettable time, because they needed little to please the public thanks to a mechanic interesting and demanding enough to bite the player.

In this case we had a protagonist, who gave the game its name, with the aim of entering the deepest part of the earth to destroy two types of enemies: Pooka and Fygar. The first was red and wore a kind of diving goggles, while the second was a green dragon that spat fire.

Tricky first point: both enemies ran faster than us. And not only that, but they could cross the earth at any moment, showing their eyes, until they found our position. And here we had to act with great caution and more speed, since our weapon, a harpoon capable of inflating enemies until they exploded, was quite limited and could only be done one by one. The good? That an inflated enemy did not move for a few seconds, a bit like in Tumblepop and video games of that other style.

We could dig horizontally and vertically, but to use the aforementioned harpoon we needed a margin of maneuver, hence the difficult thing. There were certain thinner walls where the harpoon could be strained to surprise the enemy without being able to touch us, but it was still a risk and you always had to be very careful and strategize from the beginning. Nothing to go to tuntun.

If it was already difficult on the ground, making a perfect match was even more difficult, since if we wanted to fatten the scoreboard, the main objective here were those rocks with which we could crush enemies if they were on the same trajectory. It should be remembered, by the way, that the mythical Boulder Dash, with similar mechanics, would not come out until 1984. Yes, two years later.

Returning to the rocks, they had another hidden function: if we dropped two rocks in the same phase, a fruit or a vegetable would appear as extra points (which had to be collected, with the pressure that this entails). And it was certainly not as simple a task as it might seem due to the enormous aggressiveness of the enemies to hunt us down at all times, within a few seconds of starting.

And to make it more interesting if possible, the more depth on the same screen (there were different layers of different colors to differentiate how many meters we were), the greater number of points. But no matter the years that pass, I will continue to choke on this Namco classic and I will feel useless.

A very curious and fun detail is its soundtrack, since it is most playful only when we move the protagonist. If we stay still, the most absolute silence. If we move, it begins to sound with a very characteristic rhythm, accelerating when there is only one enemy left on the screen, who will try to escape at all costs. And all to put ourselves in tension, of course.

Surprisingly, its sequel (Dig Dug II, 1985) radically changed its proposal by betting on a zenith perspective. And we had to wait until the entrance into the 21st century to receive a 3D remake of the first by Infogrames and another installment of Namco exclusive to Nintendo DS in 2005.

like all good arcade games of the time. Despite being limited in terms of control, it is part of the nature of Dig Dug itself, hence it is one of the deepest arcade games if we want to master it. If we ever succeed. I have already given up, despite leaving the year of my birth.