The game centres around the miner Digger T. Rock, as he spelunks various caves and catacombs whilst searching for the mythical Lost City. The game was the first game to be developed by the newly re-branded Rare, whereas the first game to be released under the company was Solar Jetman, earlier in 1990. Digger T. Rock is also the first Rare game released for a Nintendo console. It was later included in Rare's 2015 Xbox One retrospective compilation, Rare Replay.
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Cute sprites but who gave this kid traction issues and added in those super annoying mosquitos that you can't do anything about in certain places I just want to talk.
Also feels like a "make your own map on paper" kind of game which sucks for a game that boots you to the title upon game over and asks you do it all again in one go.
Also feels like a "make your own map on paper" kind of game which sucks for a game that boots you to the title upon game over and asks you do it all again in one go.
Constant reminder that Rare made 10 good games.
A fun puzzle platformer with some nice ideas. Digger T Rock is separated into 8 caverns. In each one, you must locate a pressure switch (which looks like a large pillar) and then rush to the exit point.
You can dig through soft rock with your shovel, find ladders to climb down large holes, and find explosives to blow up certain walls.The levels are fairly small, which makes the trial and error methodology less frustrating, and makes learning how the level works a lot of fun – even when you have to contend with hidden paths you can’t see. You’ll need to find the exit, switch and work out a path between that takes less than 60 seconds.
Unfortunately, resources are quite limited. Waste too many and you’ll need to start the level again. In some ways, Digger T Rock actually reminds me of Lemmings, except that you have control over an individual lemming. Working out the puzzle of each level is entertaining, and it’s a shame that there’s only 8.
That said, level 8 is a nightmare. There are loads of pillars that look identical to the switch, but only one will work, multiple routes to try that will waste resources. On top of that, there are no ladders or explosives in the level itself. If you haven’t saved enough stuff from previous levels, it will be impossible to finish, and you’ll have to reset the game and start from the beginning – not fun in the slightest.
With more levels and having the required resources in each level, this could be an extremely fun game. The snippets used in the snapshots were good fun, especially one where you have to make it from switch to door with no damage.
You can dig through soft rock with your shovel, find ladders to climb down large holes, and find explosives to blow up certain walls.The levels are fairly small, which makes the trial and error methodology less frustrating, and makes learning how the level works a lot of fun – even when you have to contend with hidden paths you can’t see. You’ll need to find the exit, switch and work out a path between that takes less than 60 seconds.
Unfortunately, resources are quite limited. Waste too many and you’ll need to start the level again. In some ways, Digger T Rock actually reminds me of Lemmings, except that you have control over an individual lemming. Working out the puzzle of each level is entertaining, and it’s a shame that there’s only 8.
That said, level 8 is a nightmare. There are loads of pillars that look identical to the switch, but only one will work, multiple routes to try that will waste resources. On top of that, there are no ladders or explosives in the level itself. If you haven’t saved enough stuff from previous levels, it will be impossible to finish, and you’ll have to reset the game and start from the beginning – not fun in the slightest.
With more levels and having the required resources in each level, this could be an extremely fun game. The snippets used in the snapshots were good fun, especially one where you have to make it from switch to door with no damage.
A clunky and unsatisfying 2D platformer.
idk how Rare got their act together to make DKC and Banjo cuz all their old shit is so bad oh my god
Alright, I’m gonna be completely transparent with you all for this one: I dunno what the fuck this shit is. I was just sitting around, thinking of a game to play for a good hour or so, and when I scrolled through Rare Replay to find something, I saw Digger T. Rock: The Legend of the Lost City, and thought “Ok, why not”, so I decided to check it out. And what did I think of it? Eh… it was alright. It ain’t the worst thing from Rare that I have played on the NES, and it did have some good qualities about it that made me glad that I played it, but it is really nothing too substantial or noteworthy.
The story is pretty simple, and it is pretty much every treasure hunter story ever, the graphics and art style is pretty good, with Digger himself having a very appealing in-game design, the music is… ok enough, the control is kind of rough to get a grasp on, with that and the movement I will touch upon in a bit, and the gameplay itself is fun and interesting, but at the same time equally frustrating.
The game is an exploration-based platformer, where you explore several caverns, defeat enemies with different tools, collect items along the way to help you proceed through said caverns, find the pillar to open the exit, and get to said exit before it closes up. That is all this game has up its sleeve, but, to its credit, it does have a lot going for it here. You are given plenty of items to help you explore through the caverns, such as rocks that you can throw at enemies if your shovel doesn’t do the job, there are ladders you can use to make traversing down gaps much easier, dynamite which you can use to clear out walls blocking your way, enemies, and other obstacles, and gems that you can either use in specific stages to buy more of the other items, or use as bait to lure enemies away.
All of that is pretty useful, and it allows for a lot of different means of progressing through stages to reach your goal, which I greatly appreciate. In addition to this, there are also plenty of different paths to take, parts of the environment to interact with to change the layout and where you can go, a wide variety of enemies that you wouldn’t even think you would see in this kind of game, and bonus stages in between each level to get more lives (and by that, I mean they repeat the exact same bonus stage at the end of every level, but hey, it is better than no bonus stage at all). All of this made for an interesting time, and I had a good amount of fun with it.
Although, that fun was often halted with the problems that hold this game back, with there being quite a few, but the most important issue that I feel should be brought up first would be both your movement and how you go about traversing areas. Like I said earlier, the control is a little rough, but what buttons do what is pretty understandable, and you can pick it up quick enough to where it isn’t that much of an issue, but your movement and how you move through levels is pretty jank. You have very slippery traction, making it pretty hard to figure out when exactly you should stop moving, and how fast you want to move before accidentally crashing head first into danger. This alone was probably the cause of half of my deaths, as not only is stopping an issue, but in some circumstances, starting to move was also just as much of a problem, as it takes a second for you to truly get going, and when this is paired against something that moves very quickly, the results don’t turn out great.
In addition, moving around through these caverns can be awkward as fuck a lot of the time. Just running around normally is hard enough, but digging around and climbing through tight corridors can be a pain, with it being unclear in several instances when you can interact with a climbable surface, the directions and movement in tight spots being pretty wonky, some enemies being able to attack you easily while stuck in said tight spots, and in some levels, these awkward movement and interaction with the environment are mixed in with ice physics, and I probably don’t need to tell you how much of a mess that was. Although, since I was playing this game on Rare Replay with an Xbox Series X controller, maybe it would be a little more manageable on the original system, but I can’t really test that to confirm my theory.
Alongside this, the game, much like a bunch of Rare’s older titles, has a big arcade vibe to it, and not in a good way. The game is pretty short, so you could get it done in about a half-hour if you know what you are doing, but this also comes at the cost of you having to do the whole thing in one go, and in addition, there are several instances where in order to progress, you need specific items to use to get rid of an obstacle. Not only are these items limited, but there were instances where the level in question didn’t have any of the item that you needed, meaning that you would be fucked, and needed to start the whole game over again. Thankfully, this never happened for me, but I can see this being a problem for others who don’t know what to expect from the game, which was almost the case for me.
With all that being said though, despite the many issues that this game has, I still ended up having a good amount of fun with it. Yes, I wouldn’t say it is that good of a game, but with the amount of stuff you could do, and with the variety of tools you could use, it was fun to mess around and experiment in these caverns, and it was really satisfying to find the pillar that unlocks the door, and making it to that door before any of the game’s traps could stop me. Not to mention, it has some sort of charm to it that I can’t explain. I dunno, maybe it has something to do with how Rare made it look and sound, but I can’t really stay that mad at it for too long.
Overall, while it certainly isn’t going to be leaving that much of an impact on me, and it certainly had plenty of problems, I thought the game was an alright romp with some fun elements to it, and trust me, there are WAY worse games on the NES, even ones made by the same company.
Also, quick little fun thing before we end this off, but at the end of the game (spoilers for a 33 year old game, but whatever), you do end up finding the lost city, and not only do you get to see Digger’s creepy-ass face in this part, but you are also hit with the “To Be Continued” text. I suppose Rare was planning to make a sequel to this game at some point, but… that obviously never happened. So, what I assume happens after this is that Digger just dies of starvation trying to find his way out of the lost city. A tragic end to an unloved hero…
Game #169
The story is pretty simple, and it is pretty much every treasure hunter story ever, the graphics and art style is pretty good, with Digger himself having a very appealing in-game design, the music is… ok enough, the control is kind of rough to get a grasp on, with that and the movement I will touch upon in a bit, and the gameplay itself is fun and interesting, but at the same time equally frustrating.
The game is an exploration-based platformer, where you explore several caverns, defeat enemies with different tools, collect items along the way to help you proceed through said caverns, find the pillar to open the exit, and get to said exit before it closes up. That is all this game has up its sleeve, but, to its credit, it does have a lot going for it here. You are given plenty of items to help you explore through the caverns, such as rocks that you can throw at enemies if your shovel doesn’t do the job, there are ladders you can use to make traversing down gaps much easier, dynamite which you can use to clear out walls blocking your way, enemies, and other obstacles, and gems that you can either use in specific stages to buy more of the other items, or use as bait to lure enemies away.
All of that is pretty useful, and it allows for a lot of different means of progressing through stages to reach your goal, which I greatly appreciate. In addition to this, there are also plenty of different paths to take, parts of the environment to interact with to change the layout and where you can go, a wide variety of enemies that you wouldn’t even think you would see in this kind of game, and bonus stages in between each level to get more lives (and by that, I mean they repeat the exact same bonus stage at the end of every level, but hey, it is better than no bonus stage at all). All of this made for an interesting time, and I had a good amount of fun with it.
Although, that fun was often halted with the problems that hold this game back, with there being quite a few, but the most important issue that I feel should be brought up first would be both your movement and how you go about traversing areas. Like I said earlier, the control is a little rough, but what buttons do what is pretty understandable, and you can pick it up quick enough to where it isn’t that much of an issue, but your movement and how you move through levels is pretty jank. You have very slippery traction, making it pretty hard to figure out when exactly you should stop moving, and how fast you want to move before accidentally crashing head first into danger. This alone was probably the cause of half of my deaths, as not only is stopping an issue, but in some circumstances, starting to move was also just as much of a problem, as it takes a second for you to truly get going, and when this is paired against something that moves very quickly, the results don’t turn out great.
In addition, moving around through these caverns can be awkward as fuck a lot of the time. Just running around normally is hard enough, but digging around and climbing through tight corridors can be a pain, with it being unclear in several instances when you can interact with a climbable surface, the directions and movement in tight spots being pretty wonky, some enemies being able to attack you easily while stuck in said tight spots, and in some levels, these awkward movement and interaction with the environment are mixed in with ice physics, and I probably don’t need to tell you how much of a mess that was. Although, since I was playing this game on Rare Replay with an Xbox Series X controller, maybe it would be a little more manageable on the original system, but I can’t really test that to confirm my theory.
Alongside this, the game, much like a bunch of Rare’s older titles, has a big arcade vibe to it, and not in a good way. The game is pretty short, so you could get it done in about a half-hour if you know what you are doing, but this also comes at the cost of you having to do the whole thing in one go, and in addition, there are several instances where in order to progress, you need specific items to use to get rid of an obstacle. Not only are these items limited, but there were instances where the level in question didn’t have any of the item that you needed, meaning that you would be fucked, and needed to start the whole game over again. Thankfully, this never happened for me, but I can see this being a problem for others who don’t know what to expect from the game, which was almost the case for me.
With all that being said though, despite the many issues that this game has, I still ended up having a good amount of fun with it. Yes, I wouldn’t say it is that good of a game, but with the amount of stuff you could do, and with the variety of tools you could use, it was fun to mess around and experiment in these caverns, and it was really satisfying to find the pillar that unlocks the door, and making it to that door before any of the game’s traps could stop me. Not to mention, it has some sort of charm to it that I can’t explain. I dunno, maybe it has something to do with how Rare made it look and sound, but I can’t really stay that mad at it for too long.
Overall, while it certainly isn’t going to be leaving that much of an impact on me, and it certainly had plenty of problems, I thought the game was an alright romp with some fun elements to it, and trust me, there are WAY worse games on the NES, even ones made by the same company.
Also, quick little fun thing before we end this off, but at the end of the game (spoilers for a 33 year old game, but whatever), you do end up finding the lost city, and not only do you get to see Digger’s creepy-ass face in this part, but you are also hit with the “To Be Continued” text. I suppose Rare was planning to make a sequel to this game at some point, but… that obviously never happened. So, what I assume happens after this is that Digger just dies of starvation trying to find his way out of the lost city. A tragic end to an unloved hero…
Game #169