Ah, Mr. Driller. I couldn't count the hours I spent in my youth playing the PS1 and DS versions.
This port is a faithful adaptation of the arcade-style gameplay, and looks charming to boot. The pixel animations are fluid and familiar-- Susumu's hair flys upwards as he falls!
I'd happily play this again.
My critique/suggestions for the game are as follows:
- Completely drilling an X block does not notify you of a 20% air loss. This is noted in the how to play section, but most versions of the game display an indicator.
- When Susumu dies, any surrounding air capsules are destroyed! Typically air capsules remain, allowing you to drill around them and carry them below (for when you need them).
- If you intend to expand on the game, look into some of the different block patterns/behaviors and songs (if this is in the game and I did not get far enough down, disregard). One of my favorite parts of playing the PS1 Mr. Driller is digging far enough to get to the two-colored section and going into free fall.
Thanks for the Pico 8 port! It shows a lot of love and care.
As a huge Mr. Driller fan, who has cleared the arcade game several times without dying, I really want to like this, it's a cute tribute and art style, and a lot of the gameplay is very faithful to the original. I'm not familiar with all the limitations of Pico 8, but about 3 major things here keep me from fully enjoying this and end up frustrating me.
Mr Driller isn't as nimble, half the time when I want to jump up a block he just refuses to do it, and of those half times I end up getting squashed. It forces me to play way more reservedly which doesn't bode well with the timer, and how painfully slow the air capsules want to fall down. Sometimes he doesn't want to drill to the left or right; maybe I'm not close enough, but it feels like it should have a more forgiving range because again, any error tends to cause me to die when I know exactly what I want to do but it seems to ignore my input.
I know there's only so much screen space, and the scrolling works fine when going down, but if my vertical descent stops it really ought to scroll UP... not down. A lot of times I'll be trying to make my way towards an air capsule and be crushed by a forgotten colored block that I couldn't react to because I have all of two blocks of vision above me.
Third, the game seems to bug out randomly, and worse yet, when I'm really close to the end. What happens is it looks like the background disappears, and the game crawls to like 2 FPS or something, becoming virtually unplayable.
The closest I can get is 4830ft, and I played as much trying to get to 5000 feet. I wish these issues were kinda ironed out cause there's a lot of potential here, but it's not quite hitting the same fairness as the original.
Your feedbacks are really interesting, and I do agree with it (climbing on a block... ugh, I know!)! This was a fun homemade project so I'm not sure if we're going to revisit it at some point. We did what we could in the time frame we got and within the Pico-8 limitations. Sorry for the frustration!
I keep coming back to play this. I don't remember the original, but it is vaguely nostalgic of a game about destroying groups of blocks for the Nokia? Anyway I love it, especially a little detail with the lighting not being simply darker, but also more blue versions of colours, it looks much better.
goodness this brought back so many memories. I really love the art style. It's even cuter than the original imo. Everything felt great. This is an amazing job. I wonder if a new mr driller game will come out on switch if one hasn't already?
The central protagonist in my recently released game Chuhou Joutai is apparently named Driller for some reason. His real name is also Susumu Takajima. I apparently got my start making doujinshi of Mr. Driller, but when it came time for me to make an entire game, I wound up creating an original IP because we couldn't get the rights to the franchise from Bandai Namco.
The remake of Mr. Driller Drill Land on the Nintendo Switch could create some pretty fierce competition between the two! Besides, it comes pretty close to the Wonderswan Color version in terms of graphics, but we could see better results if it was made for the NES instead!
Very nice! The only flaw I see after a couple of games is that your guys is too slow to start climbing up blocks, which in official games is tuned to let you use it as an escape when the blocks are falling, but that seems impossible here. Still, lots of fun!
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Very well done!!
好玩！
Ah, Mr. Driller. I couldn't count the hours I spent in my youth playing the PS1 and DS versions.
This port is a faithful adaptation of the arcade-style gameplay, and looks charming to boot. The pixel animations are fluid and familiar-- Susumu's hair flys upwards as he falls!
I'd happily play this again.
My critique/suggestions for the game are as follows:
- Completely drilling an X block does not notify you of a 20% air loss. This is noted in the how to play section, but most versions of the game display an indicator.
- When Susumu dies, any surrounding air capsules are destroyed! Typically air capsules remain, allowing you to drill around them and carry them below (for when you need them).
- If you intend to expand on the game, look into some of the different block patterns/behaviors and songs (if this is in the game and I did not get far enough down, disregard). One of my favorite parts of playing the PS1 Mr. Driller is digging far enough to get to the two-colored section and going into free fall.
Thanks for the Pico 8 port! It shows a lot of love and care.
I went back and it does look like the patterns change, so ignore my third comment!
Mr driller 👍🏻
Great game! It's amazing what can be done with PICO-8!
Sweet game! Ping me if you are interested in publishing it to other game portals.
I played mr driller on my DS, so I was very happy to have found this.
download link?
Great Game. Just found it and found myself wanting to play more!
Matthewmatosis, a well-respected game analyst, made a video on this game. The things he talked about really blew my mind.
Thx! Found it! very interesting indeed!
Wow, the lag is real! That shouldnt be how you'd experience the game, sorry about that.
The game was good.
wish you guys make another arcade/namco game in this style
An offline version would be great, I would also like to pay a price to support the further development.
Hello dear team, I think the game is very successful and nicely designed. It would be cool if you could still offer an offline variant.
Cool
Really cute, I like it!
Thank you!
neat game!
Thank you!
great Game
Thx!
As a huge Mr. Driller fan, who has cleared the arcade game several times without dying, I really want to like this, it's a cute tribute and art style, and a lot of the gameplay is very faithful to the original. I'm not familiar with all the limitations of Pico 8, but about 3 major things here keep me from fully enjoying this and end up frustrating me.
Mr Driller isn't as nimble, half the time when I want to jump up a block he just refuses to do it, and of those half times I end up getting squashed. It forces me to play way more reservedly which doesn't bode well with the timer, and how painfully slow the air capsules want to fall down. Sometimes he doesn't want to drill to the left or right; maybe I'm not close enough, but it feels like it should have a more forgiving range because again, any error tends to cause me to die when I know exactly what I want to do but it seems to ignore my input.
I know there's only so much screen space, and the scrolling works fine when going down, but if my vertical descent stops it really ought to scroll UP... not down. A lot of times I'll be trying to make my way towards an air capsule and be crushed by a forgotten colored block that I couldn't react to because I have all of two blocks of vision above me.
Third, the game seems to bug out randomly, and worse yet, when I'm really close to the end. What happens is it looks like the background disappears, and the game crawls to like 2 FPS or something, becoming virtually unplayable.
The closest I can get is 4830ft, and I played as much trying to get to 5000 feet. I wish these issues were kinda ironed out cause there's a lot of potential here, but it's not quite hitting the same fairness as the original.
Your feedbacks are really interesting, and I do agree with it (climbing on a block... ugh, I know!)! This was a fun homemade project so I'm not sure if we're going to revisit it at some point. We did what we could in the time frame we got and within the Pico-8 limitations. Sorry for the frustration!
I think I only got as frustrated cause I was really trying to reach the end; I eventually did it though! I hope your future projects go well.
This is such a wonderful little game. Really satisfying. Really evokes classic games super well :) Great work!
thx!
This was pretty good!
Excellent work !
Made a video
I keep coming back to play this. I don't remember the original, but it is vaguely nostalgic of a game about destroying groups of blocks for the Nokia? Anyway I love it, especially a little detail with the lighting not being simply darker, but also more blue versions of colours, it looks much better.
goodness this brought back so many memories. I really love the art style. It's even cuter than the original imo. Everything felt great. This is an amazing job. I wonder if a new mr driller game will come out on switch if one hasn't already?
I love it!
Mr.Driller is a game I tend to play a lot and I love this, The game flows so well.
The central protagonist in my recently released game Chuhou Joutai is apparently named Driller for some reason. His real name is also Susumu Takajima. I apparently got my start making doujinshi of Mr. Driller, but when it came time for me to make an entire game, I wound up creating an original IP because we couldn't get the rights to the franchise from Bandai Namco.
The remake of Mr. Driller Drill Land on the Nintendo Switch could create some pretty fierce competition between the two! Besides, it comes pretty close to the Wonderswan Color version in terms of graphics, but we could see better results if it was made for the NES instead!
good stuff!
perfectly executed, well done y'all! <3
Cool + cute!
my highscore is 2430
Just in a word.
Amazing
Excellent!
Very nice! The only flaw I see after a couple of games is that your guys is too slow to start climbing up blocks, which in official games is tuned to let you use it as an escape when the blocks are falling, but that seems impossible here. Still, lots of fun!
Really fun, congrats!
memories 😃❤️
wow, fantastic. Congrats on the release
wonderful!
Awesome Mr. Driller demake, including his advanced technique of creating 8-bit graphics with 16-bit appearance in Pico-8 (like Sega Game Gear).