Mr. Driller: Drill Land

Format: GameCube
Developed by: Namco
Published by: Namco
Based on: Puyo-Dug

Genre: Puzzle/Action
Media: Wee DVD-Rom
Date: 21 December 2002 (Japan)

Five New Attraction!

Some games are born to greatness. Some achieve greatness. And others have greatness thrust upon them. Mr. Driller falls squarely into the second category, and the process through which it has attained this achievement has required dozens of people violently clawing a path to success over the course of three years.

A simple throwback to the heyday of the arcade, the original game made its debut in early 2000 on nearly every platform imaginable and charmed gamers with its no-frills mixture of Dig-Dug, Puyo Puyo and every human's deep-seated suffocation phobias. A tiny, effeminately-color lad with a scandalously-placed drill ventured forth to save the world from evil cookies by drilling to their delicious center, all the while trying to avoid being crushed by falling objects from above or running out of oxygen. It was straightforward, simple fun of the type that once ruled the arcade scene but has been lost beneath a decade of fighting games and bad Midway racers.

Yet a mere day or two later, it was completely forgotten by the world. Namco quickly went back to the drawing board and tried to figure out how to make the series worth more than a mere rental. It's taken them four sequels [1], but they've finally realized the correct answer is "give gamers more to do than dig holes in baked goods and look for air pockets."

That's where Drill Land steps into play; it retains the series' basic concept of using a tiny cartoon person to drill through delicious-looking multi-colored blocks of stone, but places the characters [2] in an amusement park [4] to justify spinning the gameplay into new directions. Though the main focus remains on drilling pastry and cheese-like rock formations while avoiding the dangers of gravity and asphyxiation, several variations on the concept are available as theme park attractions. And in Namco's typical fashion, there's even a tie-in with one of the company's dubious "classics."

The new minigames are enough to push Mr. Driller over the edge from "pleasant, fluffy diversion" to "genuine time-suck." The game offers a total of six single-player variants on the original game as well as two multi-player games that make full use of the GC's four controller ports. Furthermore, there's a point-earning system in place that allows you to purchase permanent power-ups that can be used to enhance the minigames (and also useless prizes like Mr. Driller collector cards and action figures). You can even link up with Mr. Driller Ace to do something or another involving bacteria. I don't know what, exactly. I've been reluctant to look too carefully at that aspect of the game; bringing bacteria into such close proximity to cascades of delicious-looking cookies seems like it would cause more problems than it would solve.

Weird gimmicks aside, the games are both imaginative and enjoyable, and demonstrate a surprising amount of flexibility within a game based solely on breaking and smooshing together colored squares. Each attraction has three basic skill levels, which are unlocked in sequence, plus a final, "special" difficulty level which I sincerely doubt I will ever see without using a GameShark. They're painfully difficult beginning at Level Two, but no less enjoyable for all their challenge. Well, maybe a little less.

Hole of Dragua: Very (very) loosely based on the very old arcade game Tower of Druaga, this minigame casts Anna as a knight digging through cake-like bricks to rescue a princess (Susumu in a dress, which reinforces a lot of suspicions about the guy). There is no air limit in this game; rather, you lose a single point of stamina each time you clear a block, or attack an enemy. It's strange to fight enemies in a Mr. Driller game, but they come in the forms of Slimes, Knights, Wizards, Dragons and even a Big Scary Boss, all of whom can further drain your stamina in various annoying ways. However, Anna can gather gemstones which give her adventure game-like powers, albeit with a distinct Mr. Driller slant - clear blocks of a certain color, change blocks to a certain color, yadda yadda. Why slimes and wizards and dragons are living within the strata of underground color blocks is a mystery, but just remember that they're making a movie based on Pirates of the Carribean. Theme parks aren't bound by the laws of common sense.

Star Land: A supercharged version of the regular game, much like the Space level of Mr. Driller G. It's full of ludicrous bonuses and weird effect items, like meteors that come crashing onto the screen and blow away chunks of rock. Sort of like Sephiroth's ultimate attack, but less ludicrous. And considerably less time-intensive. Drindy Adventure: Taizo dons a fedora and leather jacket and races Belloq to acquire gold statues while spelunking in the jungle (which is, of course, full of colorful blocks). Like Hole of Druaga, this game has no air limit, merely hit points - if you're smooshed by a rock or skewered by a jungle trap three times, Marion makes you sleep on the couch again.

World Tour: The standard Mr. Driller game, now featuring peoples of different nations dancing about in the upper right corner each time you clear 100m. This happens to the accompaniment of a rad, Gamera-style children's chorus extolling the virtues of the Hori family/team/clone army. Susumu is really neat, and filled with turtle meat. Dreamland Parade: Actually, this isn't a game. It's just goofy.

Holy Night: The best of the minigames features Ataru in a natty black cape battling vampire bats with holy water. Again, this game is free of an air limit; there's also an unusual lack of gravity affecting the rocks. Here you try to avoid evil bats which are trapped in the rocks; breaking a rock with a bat inside sets the creature free and allows it to drain your hit points. But if you inject holy water into a bat-infested rock, you can break it and turn the bat into a crystal. It's like Mr. Driller infused with a heavy dose of Pac-Man and Dig Dug and then dressed up like Castlevania. Boss Battle: Once you clear all the minigames, you're locked into a frustrating boss encounter. Boss encounters and Mr. Driller don't really mix. But they can't all be winners. The graphics in Drill Land are the series' traditional simple, high-resolution 2D tiles. The sprites and objects scale to different sizes depending on the game being played, but the images are always clean and clear at any scale and on any size of TV. Hardly impressive from a technical perspective, but the visual style is distinct - a sort of retro-hip cartooniness that suggests both The Powerpuff Girls and 1980s Japanese commercial art. Plus, Namco is pretty much the god of menu interfaces, so anyone into graphic design can sigh contentedly for hours simply staring at the menus. [5]

As usual for anything by Namco (but particularly the Mr. Driller games), the music is perfect. It varies wildly from kooky Pizicatto 5-esque j-pop to thumpin' psuedo-classical techno to spooky atmospheric themes. Most puzzle games treat music as an afterthought or even as something to rob gamers of their will to live through annoying repetition and chirpy syrupiness; but the tunes here are an eclectic collection reminiscent of Wario Land Advance or the Cowboy Bebop soundtracks, and that's just swell. The fact that Namco went to the trouble of hiring a live electro-classical ensemble to perform the music is a delightful layer of gravy atop an already succulent aural feast.

The game doesn't lack for shortcomings; many of the new modes are too reliant on randomness and dumb luck, especially multiplayer Battle mode and The Hole of Druaga. The Flash animation-like cinemas are stylish and slick, but many of the character voices are so grating [6] you expect them to leave tiny shreds of cheese everywhere they walk. The story mode is also a bit excessive - the talking-to-gameplay ratio is almost as bad as in Xenogears or MGS2, although in Mr. Driller's defense an hour or two of that sort of thing (presented optionally) is a lot more tolerable than 15-70 hours of the same in a compulsory fashion. It doesn't help that the plot is beyond ludicrous, with yet another of those painfully transparent "Fools! I'm not really Mr. X, I'm Dr. Wily!" type revelations before the final showdown - it seems that the nefarious Dr. Manhole [7] is behind the entire Drill Land scheme as a devious plot to destroy the world. Of course, he waits until the only people in the world who can defeat him show up and master his various amusements before initiating his scheme. Good may indeed be dumb, but in games like this Evil is a veritable Möebius strip of ignorance.

Drill Land is unexpectedly addictive despite these flaws, but it probably won't make it to the US; Namco has all but given up on the prospect of charming Americans with its most recent mascots [8], and in any case the hero of the game is just a little too fruity to appeal to us big-nosed types. Maybe we can get J. Scott Campbell to design the art for the American release; he could give Susumu bulging muscles, a constipated expression and a cybernetic drill arm implant. And grace Anna with glowing green eyes, legs three times the length of her torso and breasts the approximate size and shape of an ICBM nose cone. Until that happens, though, there's really no reason not to have your GameCube modded anyway, so if you're in need of a new GC puzzle or party game and the spazzilicious vapidness of Smash Bros. or Mario Party 4 is chipping away at your soul, you could do far worse than Drill Land. If nothing else, it will forever change the way you think about iced cookies.

[1] A quick run-down of the series to date, since only the first one has made it stateside:

  • Mr. Driller (2000 - ARC, DC, PSX, GBC, WS): Dig, dig, dig before you run out of air. Fun! But limited.
  • Mr. Driller 2 (2001 - GBA): Dig, dig, dig before you run out of air as either Susumu or his new rival, Anna. Avoid deadly Mode 7 effects! Link up for sexxxy 2P action! Fun! Still a lacking in replayability, though.
  • Mr. Driller G (2001 - ARC, PSX): Dig, dig, dig before you run out of air as one of six characters, including Susumu's dog from the opening cinematic of Mr. Driller 2. Enjoy split-screen 2-player head-to-head action. More fun! More replayable! Still lacking something.
  • Mr. Driller Ace (2002 - GBA): Dig, dig, dig before you run out of air. Enjoy (?) a story mode where you don a suit of armor and befriend a bacterium. Kind of fun. Deeply weird. Needlessly talkative.
  • Mr. Driller Drill Land (2002 - GC): See the body of this here review, folks. That's what it's for. [Return]

[2] The six playable characters in this game are the same as the stars of Mr. Driller G:

  • Hori Susumu: The self-same Mr. Driller. He wears pink and baby blue and has a deeply irritating feminine voice. I think they were shooting for a Tetsuwan Atom appeal here - there's even a pudgy white-haired inventor guy who appears to be Susumu's father figure/creator/corporate sponsor/sugar daddy/whatever - but I liked the little guy more when he was a quiet, mysterious kid. Not unlike Megaman, although replace "arm-mounted pellet gun" with "huge, scandalously phallic drill."
  • Poochi: Susumu's dog, who was adorable when he simply barked "Wan wan!" in MD2 and is much less appealing now that he talks. He has a voice as shrill and grating as his master's, which is a real trick. Playing as Poochi offers a distinct advantage: he can climb two blocks rather than merely one, making him a more flexible character in tight spaces. He's probably slower than Susumu or something in order to compensate, but I've never noticed a real difference.
  • Anna Hottenmeyer: Mr. Driller's original rival, Anna is the only genetically female playable character. It's understandable that Susumu would feel competitive with her, since she has the same basic schtick as him but her voice is much, much manlier.
  • Hori Ataru: I'm not sure if this is supposed to be Susumu's other rival, or his evil brother, or maybe his prematurely grey genetic clone. In any case, he's pretty much the same gameplay-wise as Susumu, but he's much less cutesy. He wears grey and black, and his pet is a butt-kicking silent black bunny (non-playable from the start, sadly, although possibly unlockable by performing stupidly difficult tasks).
  • Hori [3] Taizou: The only playable character who is undeniably post-pubescent. He's a good-natured and dim-witted fellow, but since he actually has a deep, male voice the average heterosexual male can use him without feeling deeply insecure. Being bigger and dumber than Susumu, he's probably also slower and stronger as well. This sort of thing matters in RPGs and platform games, but when the game consists entirely of blasting away single colored blocks its utility is somewhat questionable. Reportedly, he's the hero of Dig Dug, which would explain a lot. But knowing that opens even more questions, like, "Where the hell are the inflatable enemies?"
  • Horinger-Z: Not only the coolest character - he politely speaks formal Japanese with a "must destroy humanity" type digitized voice - also the friendliest to use: although he's a bit slow, his body can disengage into two components. What that means for gamers like me (i.e. gamers who really suck at Mr. Driller) is that when blocks fall on top of Horinger-Z, his upper body separates to support them, leaving his lower half to continue drilling. Effectively, he has twice as many lives as other characters. For some this is known as "cheap," but for me it means I get to see something other than the game over screen when I'm done.

The cast of characters also includes a trio of Drill Land janitors who resemble what you might get if two of the micronized Zentraedi spies from Robotech teamed up with C-Ko. And then there's the amusement park director, who looks like nothing so much as the grey-haired love child of Geddy Lee and Brett from PVP Online. Which means that he's so obviously up to something evil that my saying so is a spoiler only for stunned, retarded puppies and people so obtuse they couldn't even click a weblink to get to this page. [Return]

[3] Yes, all the Drillers seem to be named Hori. I don't know if this is supposed to be their family name (Anna's name is written western-style for a little extra confusion) and they're all brothers, or if they're cyborgs and that's their product line, or what. This is a Japanese game, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually supposed to be translated as "Holy" as some sort of misguided religious symbolism.

[4] The theme park is called Drill Land, naturally. Apparently Mr. Driller and his pals are the greatest heroes in the world thanks to their ability to solve crises incisively by drilling a kilometer into the earth. This might seem a fairly limited approach to saving the world, but you'd be surprised by how many troubles seem to involve mighty geysers of sugar-frosted cookie blocks spewing violent from the planet's core. And in any case, it's a lot more plausible than the premise of upcoming Hollywood multi-million-dollar insult-to-your-intelligence "The Core." [Return]

[5] Or am I the only one who does this? Well, hell. Never mind. [Return]

[6] Especially Susumu and Poochi, both of whom belong to the misguided "squeaky upper registers are instant cute!" school of sound design which also transformed Yoshi from a dinosaur with an amusingly tiny roar to a babbling, obnoxious reptile baby. I blame Baby Mario, or maybe Mickey Mouse. [Return]

[7] Note to any future male adult film stars who might be reading this: you should hurry and adopt this as your nom de porn before someone else beats you to it. [Return]

[8] Mr. Driller and Klonoa alike have a much better presence in Japan than the US; respectively, five and seven games in Japan versus one and three in the US. Meanwhile, we continued to be buried beneath such mascot gems as Kao the Kangaroo. Oh, and Urban Yeti. [Return]