Diggin' It!

Creat Studios recently released an enhanced remake of the classic video game Digger for the PlayStation 3. I was pretty excited to discover that Sailor had downloaded it for my birthday. Digger was one of our first family games on our first PC (this would have been mid-80s). My parents fought over playing it, we all tried to beat each others' high scores, and ultimately, it fell to the wayside when we got an Atari and my parents started getting into PacMan instead.

Anyway, point being, Digger is a kind of video game nostalgia for me as I'm not really into modern gaming. I like simple games that I don't have to think too much about. Playing Digger for the past couple weeks in the vintage mode has made me realize some things about the game that I never knew back in my childhood. First, you can shoot! I never knew Digger could shoot. I just ran away from the goblins and pushed gold bags onto them. The game is so much better when you can shoot! Second, I never realized that you scored more points if you completed the tonal scale while eating the emeralds. Try it. You end up getting more for each emerald after you finish the scale. Doesn't help much on the first couple levels, but it makes a big difference when you get to level four and five.

On the downside, I really don't like using the PS3 controllers when playing this game - the key pad isn't as sensitive as I'd like and the joystick is too sensitive, which means I dig a bunch of things I don't mean to (of course, this is probably just another way of saying my hand-eye coordination kind of sucks). Also, it sucks to be playing this game with someone as adept at video games as Sailor because within a week, my chances of ever appearing on the high scores lists has greatly diminished. I'm still on there right now with one score of almost 30,000 - but I didn't actually score that. Sailor put it there to make me feel better (as if I would forget that I have yet to break 25,000), but I haven't let him know I'm on to his secret. :o)