Dig Dug II: Trouble in Paradise (1985)

Beat all 72 rounds. It was very similar to the 1st game only top down view above ground and there could be a lot more enemies on islands that could be larger than the screen. By round 15 I had to turn on slow motion mode because the difficulty ramped up. The biggest problem I had was the movement, which was not as fluid as it should have been. Like sometimes when I wanted to turn to face an enemy he would have to keep moving forward a little more or turn around and go backwards before he would turn. This made me take exaggerated movements. The best tactic I found was creating a nice line, L or C shape with fault lines to use as a barrier to hide behind while killing enemies. They were very stupid about path finding. Sinking the land was not often useful and I most often did it by accident. There were several times where I dunked a lot of enemies, which was satisfying. I liked this game a little better than the 1st due to more content, though it was less charming.

6.5/10

Just not nearly as fun as the original Dig Dug. I do appreciate them trying to do something different here, but I felt it was more repetitive and got too difficult too quickly. In Dig Dug II you are above ground, and you need to drill from one dot to the next to cut off a chunk of land, which will collapse (and any monsters on said chunk of land will fall with it, drowning in the ocean I presume). You can also inflate enemies still, which helps for crowd control early on.

It's all pretty clunky though, and it quickly becomes a game of just run from monsters, try to drill one line segment -- nope, not enough time -- run from the monsters again, circle around, try to drill that one line segment again... and so on. I do think it's funny when you accidentally kill yourself (you can cut off a chunk of land with you on it -- you have to always keep in mind that it's the smaller chunk of land that will fall), and there is some good satisfaction in taking down multiple monsters in one fell swoop. But that's something that seems only manageable at the beginning; there are just way too many enemies for that sort of thing to be feasible after a few stages.

This one's a blast from the past for me. My next door neighbor had this and we used to punish ourselves trying to get as far as we can. Same concept as the original arcade version Dig Dug only taking place above ground on a series of deserted islands, take out all the enemies on screen by using your pump to inflate them until they explode (morbid) or use your jackhammer to break off parts of the island to send them into the sea. You get a lot more points by throwing them into the drink, especially if you can get a big cluster of them at once.

Fun game, traditional 2-player turn taking is available, nothing remarkable but a fun time waster with some cute cut scenes if you can manage to get far enough. (Protip: Listen to Pump the Jam by Technotronic during gameplay for increased enjoyment.)

Score: C+