Mr Driller (Game Boy Colour)

 In 1999 Arcade legends Namco brought out Mr Driller for the arcade and it was soon ported to a number of home systems (including the Playstation, Wonderswan Colour, PC, Dreamcast and Game Boy Colour). Sadly however it seems the Game Boy Colour, due to it's limitations got a very limited game compared to it's brothers and sisters.

The game (in all it's forms) is simple, you need to dig a hole though a bunch of coloured blocks to try either try to get to a set depth (25,000 ft or 50,000 ft) or get as deep as you can (Survival mode). All three game methods play identically though as the player digs through the blocks and collects are capsules. The player needs to avoid running out of air and prevent themselves from being

 squished beneath falling blocks whilst digging to the target. The blocks can be stuck together (if you connect 3 of the same colour) or can be made to disappear if the player connects 4 or more (giving the game some technique).

Whilst the game is simple and rather limited in all honesty it does have some odd addictive quality to it that it probably shouldn't actually have. The game has nothing that blows you away, it has nothing that makes you think wow, yet you find yourself coming back just for a quick game that then becomes 3 or 4 games. Maybe that's the games secret, be simply but addictive, it'd explain the arcade success I guess.

Despite being a game that can you hook you for a good half hour you do finally ask yourself what you're doing playing it so much and you can't actually explain it. It's not something that really stands out just relatively addictive. It's a bit of a weird one that made the most of the Game Boy Colour's colour but didn't really do anything outstanding. Probably worth a purchase if you can find it cheaply but don't make a conscious effort to hunt it down.

73%

Console-Game Boy Colour (version reviewed), PC, Arcade, Dreamcast, Playstation, Mobile Phone, Wonderswan
Release-1999
Developer-Namco
Genre-Puzzle
Players-1

Trivia:
The game has had a number of sequels which have added to the original game and helped develop a fuller game from the same basic idea
The game was originally going to be part of the Dig Dug series until re-inventing it's self as Mr Driller.