Mr. Driller DrillLand is out today on Switch/Steam. It's one of my all-time favorites, and I had A Moment after downloading it—finally being able to play it in English, 18 years after its debut on GameCube, was amazing. I'm working on a full Video Works piece on it, but for now:
This game is not what you might expect if you played the original PS1/GBC Mr. Driller. Yes, that gameplay is present, but it's one of half a dozen different modes that explore the core drilling mechanic in creative ways. I streamed an overview last month:
It looks gorgeous in HD, because (from what I can tell) Namco originally built all the assets as vector art, so they just re-rendered everything in high resolution. The menus are peak Namco interface design, and everything is crisp and bright without looking cheaply uprezzed.
The soundtrack, primarily by Go Shiina, is one of the all-time greats. It encompasses music from previous Driller games and adds a ton of fantastic new tunes that span genres and eras but still sound like they belong together, combining live instrumentation and electronic beats.
The game modes and supplemental text all reach deep into Namco arcade lore, with Dig Dug (Mr. Driller's dad!) as a playable character, references to Kissy from Baraduke, and an entire mode that adapts Tower of Drauga into a block-puzzle RPG adventure.
It's VERY challenging, but there's a risk/reward element to help out: Even if you fail a mission, the points you earn can be spent as cash on items to boost your survivability. But when you use items, you don't earn points, so you have to choose one or the other for each mission.
It's also just a happy, good-hearted game. When you play the World Tour mode, the background music is a rousing anthem in which a children's chorus sings about how cool and heroic Mr. Driller is. It's a nice change of pace from, well, pretty much everything else right now.
Anyway, it's ridiculous that Bandai Namco (1) remastered this game and (2) took the time to localize it. The good kind of ridiculous. There's a free demo of the game if you're on the fence, but it only encompasses a tiny fraction of the game's contents and modes. Try it!
