Inside the Arcade: "Dig Dug" (1982)

It was marketed as a “strategic digging game”. It turns out that in 1982, digging was not just about making a hole. Not anymore!

Our guy’s name was “Dig Dug”. He was a modified-looking Smurf with a lot of moxie. He came equipped with tools to excavate the dirt and a pump to inflate enemies until they burst. He didn’t f@#k around.

Our job was to help Dig Dug clear out holes, loosen boulders to flatten bad guys, and inflate any of the red goggled dudes or fire breathing dragons in sight. The bad guys would sometimes attack us, and then out of the blue, they might just run for the exit. For them, it was fight or flight and you could get either one at any time. Racing these bad guys to the top left-hand corner of the screen and trying to catch them before they escaped is something I remember well.

The overall job of the player was to stay cool. And then, hurry up.

You could hit the “Pump” button to throw out your inflating hose. But you had to let it attach to the bad guy. If you hit the button before it latched, the hose would retract with a blinky noise. If you panicked and started slamming the button, things just got worse.

When you did get your hose attached you then had to quickly hit the “Pump” button multiple times to burst the bad guy. If another bad guy was on your tail you might have to detach and run before you pumped your target enough to destroy it. Then your target would slowly deflate and both enemies would be on your tail! Yikes.

The coolest way to dust these underground menaces was to crush them with a rock. I guess that’s where the strategic digging came in. Because you had to time this right and it wasn’t easy. A few times in my career I got two of them with one rock. “Two birds with one stone” was a reason to celebrate. It also amounted to a lot of points. But I didn’t spend too much time popping the champagne, as there were sure to be other dudes closing in on me.

As the levels progressed the bad guys got faster. They could dodge the rocks if you loosened them above. They could also just take off for the exit right from the start of the stage. They didn’t even bother fighting, they’d just run. I’d try to chase them down. But eventually, they just became too fast and the game would be over.

Dig Dug was universally loved. People who weren’t gamers per se could get a kick out of giving this a run at the arcade or pizza parlor. I mean, who doesn’t like to dig? And who doesn’t like to pump it up? But how strategic was your digging? That was the question. There were also other questions like, “what exactly is going on?”. And the only answer to that one was, “Dig Dug”.