Sometime in 1984, I think, my parents purchased a personal computer with a four color monitor–that’s right: four colors! It came with a bootable floppy-disk (back then floppy disks really were floppy!) containing a curious little game, with no instructions, called Digger.
The game had been produced in 1983 by a company called Windmill Software. With its catchy music and sound effects and ever increasing levels of difficulty, it quickly became a family favorite. Speaking of family favorite, my family loves casino games, we play at 666Casino every time we feel like playing, this way, we can play our favorite casino games easily. We had been playing Digger for months, maybe even over a year, before we discovered, accidentally, that there was a fire button. Someone bumped the keyboard while we were playing, and a tiny, never before seen, four-color fireball fired from the digger and exploded on the tunnel wall.
“What was that?!” someone exclaimed. “How’d you do that?!” We began randomly pressing keys trying to reproduce the fireball. After a good deal of experimenting, and child-like frustration, we discovered the F1 key and our game play was changed for ever.
We never had an Atari, or a Nintendo, or a Sega like most of our friends did. But we didn’t mind. We had something that none of them had: we had Digger.
Years passed and our old computer was replaced by a newer machine. After years of use, the old Digger floppy-disk eventually stopped working. Windmill was long out of business. Floppy disks stopped being floppy. People forgot what a command line was. The game became a memory.
But a little over a year ago, I rediscovered Digger.
It has been brilliantly reproduced by those, like me, who had loved it as children and is available for free. There is even a remastered version with updated graphics.
In a time when even the video games have become complicated and morally complex, Digger takes me back to that simpler time when the games were as innocent as I was. And that is important.
While this blog is dedicated, primarily, to LDS topics, it is fun to interact with our readers in interesting, new, and hopefully, fun ways. I’ve set up an online, Java-version of Digger here at the Millennial Star. It lacks the sounds and music (alas!) but is otherwise faithful to the original. The high-scores are saved here on the server, so you can test your skill against the other Millennial Star readers! And you wont even have to discover the fire-button for yourselves.
<Napoleon Dynamite>Lucky!</Napoleon Dynamite>
Play at digger.millennialstar.org
I love the classic video games like Digger. Modern games have better graphics, but they tend to require a person to play for days in order to finish them. I still kind of like the simplicity of games like Space Invaders, Pac-Man, etc. Digger was a great game. And I really loved Mr. Do for awhile. Whatever happened to Mr. Do?
If I hadn’t seen the screen-shot, I would not have remembered that I used to play this game too–on our CGA, 286MHz, 256K RAM, 50 MB hard drive computer.
You had a hard drive! Lucky!
it’s not working; at least for me.
personally, i liked the ping pong games…
and no, our TR(a)S(h) 80 didn’t have a hard drive; only a tape drive. and you thought dial up modem sounds are weird…
Lyle,
Is the game not loading at all, or is simply not responding to input?
Surely there’s something scripturally relevant about this post?
Job 1:7 “And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it.”
I’ve played Digger now a few times (from the free download) and it seems ok. I appreciate the link.
for me; it isn’t even loading. i get a graphic of a blank grey screened monitor; with instructions on playing/points below.
Lyle,
It sounds like the Java applet is not loading. If you do not have Java installed, or you have your browser set to not run java applets you would get the kind of results you describe.
Isn’t anybody here worried that using the term digger will offend degroes?
🙁 I am so offended! And I’m only 1/2 degroe!
I have very fond memories of playing Digger when I was about 7 years old — well, of losing a lot. And of watching my mom play it. It was her favorite computer game for quite some time. Digger, Frogger, and Kroz…
Hi, I can’t understand how to add your site in my rss reader. Can you help me, please 🙂
So, this was brought to my attention via a spam comment. But is this still available in Java format?
Back in the day I had it set up on our old M* hosting. You can still get the java port , as well as for Windows and Linux, here:
http://www.digger.org
I also have a port for the iPhone, though the controls are not so good:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/idigger-classic/id354993076