Dig Dug is a maze video game created and sold by Namco in 1982 for arcade machines. Atari, Inc. released it in North America. Players dig tunnels underground to attack enemies. They can either inflate the enemies until they pop or crush them with rocks.
Masahisa Ikegami planned and designed Dig Dug with help from Shigeru Yokoyama, who created Galaga. Shouichi Fukatani and Toshio Sakai programmed the game for the Namco Galaga arcade board. Fukatani had worked on many of Namco's earlier games. Yuriko Keino composed the music. She included a special sound effect for character movement at the request of company leaders. This was her first game for Namco. Namco promoted the game as a "strategic digging game."
When it was released, critics praised the game for its fun and engaging play and its cute, colorful characters. During the golden age of arcade games, Dig Dug became very popular worldwide. It was the second most profitable arcade game in Japan in 1982. The game led to many follow-up games and related titles, such as the Mr. Driller series, available on various platforms. It is included in many Namco game collections for different systems.
Gameplay
Dig Dug is a maze video game where the player controls the main character, Dig Dug (Taizo Hori), to defeat enemies in each stage. The enemies are Pookas, red, round creatures that wear large goggles, and Fygars, dragon-like beings that breathe fire. Dig Dug can use an air pump to inflate enemies until they explode or crush them with falling rocks. When the air pump is used, Dig Dug stops moving and throws the pump forward. If the pump hits an enemy, it freezes them in place, and the player can press the button repeatedly to inflate them. If the player does not act or moves, the pump disconnects, and the enemy begins to deflate, becoming stunned until fully deflated. Rocks cannot be dug through but fall after a short time if the tile beneath them is removed by Dig Dug. Falling rocks are destroyed when they land on a tile. Bonus points are given for squashing multiple enemies with one rock, and dropping two rocks in a stage gives a bonus item that increases in value as the player progresses. After defeating all enemies, Dig Dug moves to the next stage.
Enemies move through tiles and appear as ghostly eyes. They are temporarily invulnerable, move slowly, and cannot attack. They return to normal when reaching an empty space, whether it is their destination or along the way. Enemies may do this to reach Dig Dug or escape the stage as the last enemy. As enemies are defeated, they become faster and more aggressive. The last enemy tries to escape by moving upward through tiles and then walking toward the nearest screen edge.
The game has 255 stages. Later stages have different dirt colors and more enemies that move faster. Players lose lives by touching enemies, Fygar’s fire, or being crushed by falling rocks. Extra lives are given during the game. At stage 256, an 8-bit integer overflow bug causes the game to load stage 0 instead. This error disrupts level generation, and the game spawns a Pooka that cannot be avoided, killing the player and ending the game. This is called the "kill screen" in most versions of the game. However, a later Atari release fixed this bug, allowing the game to continue infinitely.
Development
Dig Dug was created and designed in 1981 by Masahisa Ikegami, with help from Shigeru Yokoyama, the creator of Galaga. The game was programmed for the Namco Galaga arcade system board by Shigeichi Ishimura, a Namco hardware engineer, and the late Shouichi Fukatani, along with Toshio Sakai. Other team members were mainly colleagues of Shigeru Yokoyama. Yuriko Keino composed the game's soundtrack, which was her first video game project. She was asked to create a sound for Dig Dug's movement but could not make a realistic stepping sound, so she made a short melody instead. Hiroshi "Mr. Dotman" Ono, a Namco graphic artist, designed the game's sprites.
The team wanted to let players create their own mazes, which could lead to different ways to play, unlike the fixed mazes in Pac-Man (1980). Namco's marketing materials called Dig Dug a "strategic digging game."
Release
Dig Dug was first released in Japan by Namco in March 1982. It was then released in North America by Atari, Inc. in April 1982, and in Europe on April 19 by Namco.
The first home versions of Dig Dug were developed and published by Atari for its Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 consoles and released in October 1983. Additional versions were released for the TI-99/4A (December 1983), Atari 8-bit computers, Commodore 64, IBM PC, and Apple II (December 1984). A version for the Atari 7800 was planned for 1984 but delayed because of changes in Atari management. It was finally released by Atari Corporation on May 15, 1986. A similar version for the Intellivision was also delayed and released in July 1987.
In Japan, Dig Dug was released for the PV-1000 in 1983, the MSX in 1984, and the Famicom on June 4, 1985. Gakken released a handheld LCD tabletop game in 1983 that used a flamethrower instead of an air pump because of hardware limits. A version for the Famicom Disk System, based on the 1985 Famicom version, was released on July 20, 1990. Namco released a Game Boy version in North America and Europe in September 1992, which included a new game mode called "New Dig Dug" where players collect keys to open an exit door. The Game Boy version was later included in the 1996 Japan-only compilation Namco Gallery Vol. 2, which also featured Galaxian, The Tower of Druaga, and Famista 4. A Japanese X68000 version was developed by Dempa and released on February 24, 1995, bundled with Dig Dug II. The Famicom version was re-released in Japan for the Game Boy Advance on June 21, 2004, as part of the Famicom Mini series.
Dig Dug is often included in Namco game collections, such as Namco Museum Vol. 3 (1996), Namco History Vol. 3 (1998), Namco Museum 64 (1999), Namco Museum 50th Anniversary (2005), Namco Museum Remix (2007), Namco Museum Essentials (2009), and Namco Museum Switch (2017). The game was released online on Xbox Live Arcade in 2006, with online leaderboards and achievements. It is part of Namco Museum Virtual Arcade and added to the Xbox One’s backward compatibility lineup in 2016. A version for the Wii’s Virtual Console was released in Japan in 2009. Dig Dug is a bonus game in Pac-Man Party, alongside the arcade versions of Pac-Man and Galaga.
Reception
Dig Dug was very successful and well-received when it was first released. It was praised for its gameplay and complex strategies. In Japan, it was the second most popular arcade game in 1982, after Namco’s Pole Position. In North America, Atari sold 22,228 Dig Dug arcade machines by the end of 1982, earning $46,300,000 (about $154,000,000 in 2025) in sales. By July 1983, it was one of the six most popular games. The 2004 Famicom Mini version sold 58,572 copies, and the Xbox Live Arcade version sold 222,240 copies by 2011.
American magazine Blip Magazine compared Dig Dug to games like Pac-Man, noting its simple controls and fun gameplay. AllGame called it an arcade and NES classic, praising its characters, gameplay, and unique idea. It also praised how easily the game was adapted for home systems. In 1998, Japanese magazine Gamest named Dig Dug one of the greatest arcade games of all time, noting its addictive nature and how it broke the traditional "dot-eater" style of games like Pac-Man and Rally-X. In 2007, Eurogamer called its gameplay and strategy "perfect," calling it one of the most memorable and legendary video game releases of the past 30 years. The Killer List of Videogames ranked it the sixth-most-popular coin-operated game of all time.
Electronic Fun with Computers & Games praised the Atari 8-bit version for keeping the fun gameplay and simple controls from the original arcade game.
Some home versions of the game were criticized for poor quality and not including unique content. Readers of Softline magazine ranked Dig Dug the tenth-worst Apple II game and fourth-worst Atari 8-bit game of 1983, due to its low quality and failure to meet expectations.
When reviewing the Xbox Live Arcade re-release, IGN liked its presentation, leaderboards, and addictive gameplay, recommending it for both old and new players. GameSpot and Eurogamer also praised its colorful artwork and faithful recreation of the original arcade experience. However, Eurogamer, IGN, and GameSpot all pointed out that the game lacked online multiplayer and that achievements were too easy to earn. Eurogamer specifically criticized the game’s controls for sometimes being unresponsive.
Legacy
Dig Dug started a trend of games where players dig through the ground. Similar games include the arcade game Zig Zag (1982), the Atari 8-bit computer game Anteater (1982) by Romox, Merlin's Pixie Pete, Victory's Cave Kooks (1983) for the Commodore 64, and Saguaro's Pumpman (1984) for the TRS-80 Color Computer. The most successful game was Universal Entertainment's arcade game Mr. Do! (1982), released about six months after Dig Dug and becoming more popular than its similar games. Sega's Borderline (1981), when it was adapted for the Atari 2600 as Thunderground in 1983, was sometimes called a "semi-clone" of Dig Dug and Mr. Do! Boulder Dash (1984) also had similarities to Dig Dug. Many mobile games are copies or variations of Dig Dug, such as Diggerman, Dig Deep, Digby Forever, Dig Out, Puzzle to the Center of Earth, Mine Blitz, I Dig It, Doug Dug, Minesweeper, Dig a Way, and Dig Dog.
Dig Dug inspired many follow-up games for different platforms. The first sequel, Dig Dug II, was released in Japan in 1985 but was not as successful. This game used a top-down view instead of digging through earth, with Dig Dug drilling along cracks to sink parts of an island into the ocean. A second sequel, Dig Dug Arrangement, was released for arcades in 1996 as part of the Namco Classic Collection Vol. 2. This version added new enemies, music, power-ups, boss battles, and two-player cooperative play.
A 3D remake of the original game, Dig Dug Deeper, was published by Infogrames in 2001 for Windows. A sequel for the Nintendo DS, Dig Dug: Digging Strike, was released in 2005. This game combined elements from the first two Dig Dug games and connected to the Mr. Driller series with a story. A multiplayer online game, Dig Dug Island, was released in 2008 as an online version of Dig Dug II. The game's servers stopped working in April 2009.
Two slot machines based on Dig Dug were made by Oizumi in 2003, each with small LCD screens for animated characters. A webcomic adaptation was created in 2012 by ShiftyLook, a company that revives older Namco games. The webcomic had nearly 200 issues by different artists and ended in 2014 when ShiftyLook closed. Dig Dug is a main character in the ShiftyLook webseries Mappy: The Beat. A version of the Dig Dug soundtrack appears in the PlayStation 2 game Technic Beat. An animated short based on Dig Dug was made in 2025 by Gamisodes in partnership with Bandai Namco. It will be available on the Gameisodes platform from June 17 to June 30, 2025.
The character Dig Dug was renamed Taizo Hori, a name based on the Japanese phrase "horitai zo," meaning "I want to dig." Taizo became a main character in Namco's Mr. Driller series, where he is shown to be the father of Susumu Hori and married to Masuyo Tobi, the main character of Baraduke. They divorced for unknown reasons. Taizo appears as a playable character in Namco Super Wars for the WonderSwan Color and Namco × Capcom for the PlayStation 2, but only in Japan. He also appears as the principal of a high school in the now-closed web game Namco High, known simply as "President Dig Dug." Pookas, characters from Dig Dug, appear in other Namco games like Sky Kid (1985), R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 (1998), Pac-Man World (1999), Pro Baseball: Famista DS 2011 (2011), and in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U (2014). Characters from Dig Dug briefly appear in the movie Wreck-It Ralph (2012).