216. Dig Dug (Namco, Famicom, 1985)

While I've played the original 1982 arcade version of Dig Dug many times, I've never touched the Famicom version, released 3 years later. There are fewer colors, and those that are present are less vibrant. The audio is also slightly more tinny-sounding, but it is still a about a 95% perfect facsimile of Dig Dug. I just don't like Dig Dug all that much, the pace is just a little to slow for my taste and I don't have a great time controlling the character, not to mention that every level feels too similar.

I did at least manage to figure out a little trick that I'm not sure exists in the arcade version: when you are inflating an enemy, it takes 4 pumps to pop them, but the game will only let you pump every so often (about 4 per second). But if you hit an enemy with your hose, the inflation happens right away, and you can disconnect your hose by moving, so my alternately mashing a direction and pump, I was able to frame cancel the downtime between pumps and inflate enemies faster than normal.

3/5, a pretty faithful port of a classic game that I just don't love