Mr. Driller

About Mr. Driller

Mr. Driller (1999) is Namco's arcade puzzle game, conceived as Dig Dug 3, in which Susumu Hori drills down through coloured blocks while racing his own dwindling air supply.

Mr. Driller in Depth

The player controls Susumu Hori, the Mr. Driller of the title, drilling through formations of coloured blocks to reach the bottom of a well, in a game described as a cross between Puyo Puyo and Dig Dug. Blocks of the same colour stick together, and when four of a kind connect they vanish, which can set off chain reactions; falling blocks can crush him. His oxygen meter drains constantly and is topped up by collecting blue air capsules, while brown blocks marked with an "x" take five hits to break and cost oxygen. The player has to balance speed, safety and air on the way down. The story has creatures called Undergrounders flooding the Earth with giant blocks.

Susumu was later connected to Namco's history: he is the son of Taizo Hori, the hero of Dig Dug, and the series' characters have become closely associated with the Namco brand in Japan.

Making Mr. Driller

Nagaoka designed the game to be more puzzle-based than the action-oriented Dig Dug and Dig Dug II, and Yoshizawa reworked his prototype before Namco released it in arcades in 1999 to critical and commercial success. Ports followed on the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Game Boy Color, WonderSwan Color, Windows and mobile phones, and Famitsu gave the Game Boy Color version its Silver Hall of Fame award. Western reaction was cooler; journalist Jeremy Parish suggested the backlash against the Dreamcast port contributed to the series' lukewarm reception outside Japan, though critics generally agreed its play was simple and addictive, and some found the home ports short of content. Yoshizawa and Nagaoka began Mr. Driller 2 in late 1999, and the dedicated team Project Driller made later sequels, including Mr. Driller G, which made Susumu the son of Dig Dug's Taizo Hori.