Mr. Do!

Name:	Mr. Do!
Company:	Coleco
Model #:	2656
Programmer:	Ed English (Individeo)
Year:	1983
Released?	Yes
Notes:	Port of the 1982 arcade by Universal

Mr. Do! has got to be one of the strangest arcade games the era. The goal of the game is to guide the clown, Mr. Do, as he digs through the ground to collect cherries while evading little dinosaurs (Creeps), ghost monsters (Chompers), and letter people (Alpha Monsters).  I don't know what was in the water over in Japan, but it's hard to top Mr. Do! in terms of crazy plots.  It's hard to believe, but Mr. Do! was actually almost stranger as the original Japanese release starred a snowman with a rake.  I guess that makes about as much sense as a digging clown when you think about it...

Thankfully Mr. Do isn't defenseless against these foes, he has two weapons up his sleeve.  First he can use the apples scattered around the screen to smash baddies ala Dig Dug (who stole from who?) or he can fire off his power ball to blast enemies into bits.  While the power ball is easier to use, there is a wait time before Mr. Do can use it again so don't become too dependent on it.  The amount of time it takes for the ball to recharge depends on how often you use it, so try and make use of the apples when available (just try not to squish yourself in the process).  Apples can also be used to block the path of incoming baddies so use that to your advantage.

While the maze is generally populated by Creeps, there are two other enemies you'll encounter as well.  Creeps will begin to transform into Chompers after a while or when Mr. Do starts to block them with apples.  Chompers are not only faster but can also dig through the dirt after Mr. Do.  An Alpha Monster will appear when you score 1,000 points and if the cursor is over a letter you haven't already collected.  When you kill an Alpha Monster you'll also score the letter that they were sporting on their body.  If you manage to spell out the word EXTRA you'll win an extra life.

Although Mr. Do's is out to feed his cherry addiction, there are actually three ways to clear a round.  Collect all the cherries (this is the most common way), destroy all the Creeps (this tends to happen in later rounds out of self defense), or spell out EXTRA with the Alpha Monsters.  The arcade game had a fourth way which was to collect the diamond that rarely appeared when an apple split which also gave you a free game.  Almost no home version included the diamond since winning a free game at home really didn't make much sense.  Speaking of cherries, if Mr. Do manages to grab all six cherries in a cluster in a row without stopping he'll get a bonus (you'll know you're doing it right when the tone keeps going up).

The Atari 2600 port of Mr. Do! is playable, but is quite different from the arcade game.  The biggest difference is that Mr. Do no longer digs tunnels through the dirt but rather clears entire blocks.  This means that instead of making a maze of tunnels to distract and hide from enemies in, Mr. Do is often out in a wide open space with no protection. This coupled with the poor AI of the enemies (they basically mimic your movement) can lead to cheap frustrating deaths on all but the easiest difficulty.  Another change is that the screen space is drastically reduced.  The arcade version use a vertical monitor which allowed for a 12x13 playfield while the 2600 port reduces this to a rather cramped 16x8 grid.  Losing 5 rows may not sound like a bug deal, but this along with the lack of tunnels leaves Mr. Do without many places to hide.  Other differences include the removal of the food prize that appears after all the bad guys have spawned, Alpha Monsters cannot eat apples, two missing levels (although the 2600 port doesn't follow the arcade layouts anyway), apples fall as soon as you dig under them (you cannot hold them up), and of course there are no hidden diamonds.

While the sound is ok (consisting of the standard 2600 beeps), there's no longer any music during the levels and the music at the start of the levels has some out of tune sounding notes when the screen jumps.  The graphics are decent and although there's a lot of flicker when Mr. Do is lined up with a row of cherries, this is fairly normal for a 2600 game.  There are four difficulty levels available with 'skill 3' being equivalent to the arcade game and 'skill 1' being the easiest.  Since skill 1 is what's selected if the fire button is used to start the game, that's probably what most people ended up playing.

While the 2600 port pales in comparison to the the arcade original if you try to think of it as an original game then it's not too bad.  Some games just don't port well to the 2600 and sadly Mr. Do! is one of them.

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