Big combos, man... big combos.

You can get all the way to round 11 without individual kills of any kind, if you play it right. (AND get the fruit from nearly every level along the way)

The only individual kills I'll end up with are when somebody slips the noose at the last second.
(Rd 9 is notorious for that... your 30k max combo drops to 20k and you get a measely 200 pts for inflating the straggler to death)

Also, "fishing" can really add up in stages like Rd 6, where it otherwise doesn't look like there is much to do.


As a benchmark in getting in the right mindset, see if you can meet-or-beat 13,500 in Rd 1.

Sprite-limits in this game are a KILLER!

Yep, they should have fixed this with some sprite cycling
Even I could do this

Anybody else get a maroon fish that was worth 5000 points? I got it somewhere in the mid-teen rounds and I'm not exactly sure what I did to make it pop up. I'm guessing I maybe killed about 10 fish in the round and then that was a bonus?

That's interesting. I don't know the max fish that I've gotten in a level, but I can safely say it was fewer than 10.

Nice score by the way. I was still having trouble shifting from big combos to survival around the Rd 13-15 mark, so I waste too many lives on the transition to genuine difficulty. If I can get over that hump, I can get into the 300's with no issue, based on starting at Rd 14 or 15 to practice.

Thanks, I got a little better at bulking up on points during the earlier rounds. I'm gonna hopefully give it one more shot tonight to break 400k. I think that fish must be round specific because in the later rounds I definitley killed more fish per round trying to see if it would happen again but it didn't.

Yeah, I very nearly broke 400k by Level 19, but it was not to be.

Bittersweet run of the afternoon:

392,500 (after R19)




So I reached round 20 on this one, and had a nice set-up for a big combo... then died a stupid death.

No points in rd 20
Pretty sure anything I pulled off in that level was about to throw me over 400k.

Fun game, glad the contest encouraged me to try it out.

191,600 (Round 19)

Congrats to Arch and Briguy for flirting with the 400k bar.

25140

I'm sorry to be the one to say, but that's the first Dig Dug.  It's Dig Dug II this week.  You still have some time left at least, but not much.

66,000 (Round 12,I think?)

I've never been great at this game, but, unlike last week, I never really improved much. Still, it's a fun little game.

11,900

On vacation all week, just got back around 9:30. Pariticipation points!

184,700 (Round 17)

I would REALLY like to see some high level play of this game.

145,400

Not sure why where the Dracula Game is there but I don't want to mess with it and loose my picture.
Also had a hard time with figuring out which land would drop. After playing the level over and over I could figure it out but it's hard on the fly to see which piece is bigger.

I found the key to be drawing the longest vertical lines you could manage in a sort of zig zag.

then it was relatively easy to herd the enemies to one end of the level and know with certainty that you are chopping off the small piece.

then before the score clears the screen gradually mop up the fishing holes in sequence (since the level doesn't end until a score is no longer actively on screen, it seems)

The fishing was usually good for a few thousand per level, plus the fruit.  And preperforating parts of the level also makes it easier to tell what part will fall, in a pinch.

Good scores everyone. I'm on vacation this week,so I pretty much just played this a little last sunday and that's it.

10,800

Unless the world records required 1-life-only, I can pretty readily see how they are acheivable with a week or two of practice.


I definitely feel like while this was an "arcade" game for the contest, it was really a puzzle game at heart.

Yup, 2-3 weeks tops is about how much time I've spent on the game.  The TG "record" I set was actually a contest score when I was given a short timeframe, and of course my best score was done in a week for NA.

I want to get back to this game and try to "beat" it for real.  There are roughly 70 levels before anything repeats, which is pretty impressive for a game this old.

Agreed.  It is a really neat game.  Surprised I missed it back-in-the-day.

I guess I misunderstood the "difficulty reset" comment from Gutsman to imply the game looped at round 30-something.


If there are 70 unique levels a "beat" is going to get into the multiple millions, assuming the higher levels have 9's and 10's of enemies to herd and kill.



Oh, any insight on the more valuable fish that BriGuy saw?
It occurred to me that specific fishing squares might have them, irrespective of how many fish you've acquired.

Yup, the difficulty does reset after every 32 levels, but the island layouts keep changing.  I would presume that a good strategy would be to take advantage of the slower stages for points, then rush through the harder ones.

A multi-million score is what I have in mind when I try to play it again.  With a game genie, I know that the score keeps going after a million.  (Amusingly, the original arcade version doesn't.  It maxes out at exactly 1,000,000 instead of 999,999.)

I've never seen the special bonus fish.  I haven't spent much time on fish because of their low point values.

That's an interesting perspective.

I found fishing to be extremely lucrative.  Worth a few thousand per level, at least, if you set everything up correctly.

it really adds up over the course of the game, and was the easiest way to guarantee you'd get the fruit if you were otherwise doing max combos against the enemies.

Usually I will go for fish/fruit on later stages where it's too fast to get a good combo.  Any stage with 8 or more enemies and I choose to combo.  The difference in point values at 8 enemies is still higher than what you can get otherwise, where you usually have to combo less to stay alive while you fish.

It's true that fishing can sometimes be profitable on some stages, like the early ones.  The problem with those levels is that it takes a long time to get the points.  (unless we can figure out the big fish bonus)  Timewise, once you master the game, I would find it more efficient to just keep passing levels.  For example, kill most of the enemies, dig a few holes, get the fruit, get out.