About 27 years ago, arcade games like Dig Dug and Mr. Do! offered some good arcade fun with a simple concept about digging underground to defeat monsters or find cherries. A year later, a PC game called Digger appeared with a similar concept, but with the goal of collecting gems in what was very much a clone of Mr. Do! and Dig Dug. 26 years later, Digger HD has surfaced to give the classic PC game a new facelift for PSN.

Digger HD’s concept is a simple one. You’re in control of a sentient piece of mining equipment that needs to collect all of the gems in a level to beat it while enemies stroll in to stop you. There are some tricks that you have at your disposal to defeat enemies, such as a limited weapon that you can shoot and money bags that can be dropped onto enemies by digging out the ground underneath it or by pushing it towards a vertical tunnel. As you play through levels, some new items are available, like bombs, ice bombs, and power-ups that can make you faster or invincible.

The normal arcade mode in Digger HD starts off with simple levels that don’t have many gems in them, but gradually starts to fill up all of the available dirt as you progress through its 60 levels. To maximize your score, you really do need to survive and not run out of both lives since your score resets when the enemies are victorious. Early on, the game is pretty easy and definitely gets hard enough that you can maybe get through a level or two with your two lives, but that’s not enough to get a great score. Luckily, the game is friendly enough that you can continue from the latest level you’ve unlocked, so beating the game is a matter of perseverance rather than skill.

Besides the arcade mode, Digger HD also offers a survival mode and the original Digger game in all of its original glory. The survival mode offers new levels, but unless you’re a really good player, you probably won’t see more than a few of them. The original Digger is similar to the survival mode since you start over from the beginning when you lose, but it does have that old-school arcade flavor that the arcade games it ripped-off also offered. In addition to those modes, there are co-op versions of the arcade and survival modes, which don’t offer new levels, but just a slightly different way of playing those modes when you have a friend over. There’s not a ton of content here, but what is there is enjoyable for all of its retro quirks.

Creat Studios definitely did a good job of updating the visuals of Digger HD, as the levels look really nice in the details of the dirt and all that along with some nice details that you don’t really expect. The levels are clean and sharp and don’t really get old since there are also nice ice and desert themes for the last two thirds of the arcade campaign. Neat details like support beams crumbling and hitting the lamps when you run into them show the attention to detail that the developers had when working on these levels. The main menus may seem familiar for iTunes users, as it’s pretty much a complete rip-off of the Cover Flow interface, which looks really sleek for Digger HD since it is a simple, easy way to find the level you want to play. The music definitely captures the catchy retro vibe really well that makes playing this game a pleasant experience.

Digger HD doesn’t really have the addictive gameplay and number of modes we’d expect for a $10 PSN game, but what is here is a fun game that captures the simple, retro vibe you always look for in a retro remake. If Digger HD ever goes on sale for $5 or so, you should definitely get this game, but at its current price, we can’t really recommend it to anybody but people that loved the PC version or either of the two games that inspired it.

Final Score: 7.4 | Recommendation: On Sale Only

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About This Author: Chris Selogy

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