Digger T. Rock (NES Game)

Digger T. Rock is a Montezuma's Revenge-ish/ Boulderdash-ish game in which you play a cut little miner kid armed with a shovel. Your goal is to explore each level by digging through the dirt and collecting treasure while avoiding baddies such as mosquitoes.

Here's the good, the bad, and the ugly as far as this game goes. The good- Your character is well animated, especially in death. His corpse will rot quickly in front of you like he drank from the wrong grail. It's a pretty cool effect. The digging animation is also nicely done. I also enjoy the fact that once you trip the countdown for your exit, a little clock in the lower left hand of the screen will count down to zero as a door slowly slides shut. It causes a nice level of panic when you can't remember where the door was. It's like Descent: you may want to explore the level a little before tripping the exit button, otherwise you'll never find your way out. The Bad- You're fairly defenseless. You can swing your little shovel at the mosquitoes, but it's much easier for them to take life from you than vice versa. You also start out with some rocks in your arsenal, and it seems that the computer will choose which weapon you use depending on what you're fighting. You can also pick up dynamite and other weapons/tools, but I found it as easy to kill myself with these things as it was to kill enemies. Maybe I'm just bad at this game. I don't play it often, so that's a very realistic possibility. The Ugly- All the backgrounds are ugly. The first level is puke colored with a puke colored door. The second level is teal (a color that seemed to take over everything in the 90's for no good reason) with a pink door, which is still an unsightly combo. The third level is a brownish orange with a grey door. I don't know about the others because I didn't bother to get that far. The game just isn't that visually appealing.

If you put the pros and cons of this game on an old-timey balance, I think it tips slightly toward the cons. Sure, there are some very nice pros to this game but the cons cannot be ignored. And I think this is the last time I'll do a good, bad, and ugly-style review.