digdug

So you can play by digging tunnels and biting enemies? That's the first thing Dig Dug will do to whoever's curious about it. Instead of shooting or jumping, you grab a pump and inflate monsters until they burst — or you get rid of them by dropping a chunk of dirt on them. There's something half-comic, half-genius about it.

Dig Dug from 1983 is an arcade game by Namco ported to the Atari 2600, where you play as a little digger — and what you're called doesn't really matter — the point is you're tunneling through dirt and dodging two types of monsters. One type hunts you down relentlessly, the other hesitates for a bit. Each level is basically just a differently arranged grid of tunnels you need to dig through, while you rack up points from fruit and frozen monsters.

Playing it is simple in theory — you're slow, the monsters aren't faster, but they're everywhere. The pump works as you'd expect: hold the button, the monster inflates, release it, it bursts. A chunk of dirt falls on the player, and you can use that to take out a pursuer if you time it just right. In the Atari version it's not as snappy as the original arcade — the controls are a bit sluggish, the on-screen action a bit less sharp — but the core system still kills.

What keeps Dig Dug afloat even now is exactly that mechanic. In the eighties it wasn't particularly original — the arcade itself came out in 1982 — but nobody copied it more faithfully than this Atari port. It's not about reflexes and precision, but about logic and reading the situation. You learn where you can squeeze, which tunnel goes up and which one you can safely dig through without losses.

These days you can play Dig Dug in an emulator or in your browser without any fuss. It's nothing wild, but maybe an eighties guy who remembers what it smelled like in the arcade will appreciate that this piece of archaic logic survived at all. The game doesn't wear out immediately, but after a few rounds you see what you've got. It's not for those who want an experience; it's for those who want to play an old, working game without the fluff.