A port of Dig Dug
Dig Dug is a 1-2 player arcade game in which you have to use your shovel to dig your way through the earth. Stopping you from doing this are two monsters, called Pooka and Fygar, who will continually chase you around. The only weapon that you carry is an air pump, which you can use to inflate the monsters to the point where they explode. (if you start to inflate them but stop doing so, the monsters will get turned back to their normal selves). Furthermore, rocks are scattered throughout the earth, and you can use these rocks to squash them. If the monsters do not find you for several seconds, they will eventually get turned into ghosts, which can walk through the earth. They are invincible and cannot be killed. From time to time, vegetables will appear in the center, and you can get these for points.
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Considering the launch line-up I'm going through right now, Atari definitely targeted this console initially to people who wanted to play arcade games at home. I'd say that's definitely a good choice considering just how good Atari has been so far with arcade conversions here. This is undoubtedly the best port of Dig Dug you could have bought at the time of release in North America (The Famicom port beats this out, but that didn't come to the NES).
I've always really loved Dig Dug. You can really tell based on the cutsie visuals and the brilliant risk vs. reward arcade goodness that this is a post Pac-Man Namco title. I'm not going to go in-depth because if you're reading this you've played Dig Dug, but just know that this is definitely an exceptionally well-designed Arcade title.
As a port, The Atari 7800's Dig Dug comes about as close as possible to the original. The graphics are chunky and the audio isn't as good, but that's up to the low resolution and the bad base sound of the 7800. Then again, I can't say the graphics or sound are bad. For what the 7800 is, the sound is actually very great, and the graphics are still really detailed and readable. The controls felt pretty spot-on, but I will note I haven't played the original game in a while. I just know that playing the 7800 version felt great.
This doesn't matter to me at all, but it's worth noting that this game comes with a kids mode, offering a slower and easier version of the base game for newcomers. If you're introducing a young kid to Dig Dug, you might as well go with this one.
This is certainly a must-have title for the 7800 and thankfully it's a very cheap pick-up (same with Pole Position II, sitting around 5 bucks). You really don't have much of a reason to not try it.
8/10