Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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gct
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by gct »

EmperorIng wrote:Hole of Druaga Lvl 3 seems like it'll be totally luck dependent on what Dristones you get, and with such a large maze I'm not sure how to best go about conserving air/HP and using Dristones.
I cleared it way back in the day and cleared it again just now, with 119 HP remaining.

Explore as much as you can first to find the key guardian, and the final guardian's entrance. If you find a room with only two colours of blocks, remember its location. Don't be afraid to use your change/destroy stones while searching for this room. Warp to this room repeatedly to stock up on health and Dristones before warping back to the final guardian's entrance. Try to keep equal numbers of change/destroy Dristones of each colour to optimize your inventory. At the bottom of the 2-colour room, just get rid of some of your less-useful stones and some of the change colour stones that are too numerous for the destroy stones of the same colour. I will go in to fight the guardian with maybe two HP+20% items, and the rest will be evenly-matched change/destroy stones, and you can defeat the guardian hardly needing to drill at all, except to move downwards slightly to fill the screen with more blocks.
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Sumez
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by Sumez »

I hear Usagi can be unlocked in DillLand, but I can't find any information how.
I've seen places claim that he'll be available after beating the game on Level 1, but I'm working on Level 3 stages now and still don't have him.

Does anyone know?
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Cata
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by Cata »

Sumez wrote:I hear Usagi can be unlocked in DillLand, but I can't find any information how.
I've seen places claim that he'll be available after beating the game on Level 1, but I'm working on Level 3 stages now and still don't have him.

Does anyone know?
I'm not sure either! Would love to find out because this game is absolutely incredible. I've spent so many hours the past few days just playing round after round and it never gets boring! Can't believe it took me this long to play this series!

Other question too would be: how is the time bonus calculated? Is it a straight multiplier off of finish time of a course?
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Cata
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by Cata »

Also would be really cool to score chase with yall!

Just been practicing the drill world tour so far but been having a blast!

Image

Image
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dojo_b
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by dojo_b »

Just wanted to thank folks for introducing me to this series, which I'm excited to try. I fell hard for Tetris Attack in college--the sheer scope for massive improvised combos, an ever-deepening well of skill and perception, an endless dream of graceful rearrangement. There isn't room in my life to do it justice but I still keep eyes peeled for a worthy successor.

I think there's definitely some strong potential for a broader thread on "puzzle action" titles, however the boundaries are understood. I personally would include "cutesy" arcade-style platformers like Bubble Bobble and Mighty Bomb Jack, for example; platformers, sure, but in some sense part of an alternative and semi-forgotten lineage eclipsed by Super Mario Bros. The animating values I would hope to see---and this is just me talking, while drinking---are the same as in the Ninja Gaiden thread and elsewhere (the gospel of BIL?): a spirit of informed appreciation, with a literate, comparative perspective; a valorizing of skilled play, broadly construed, but with room for personal style/goals and without a monomaniacal focus on score or speed.
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Sumez
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by Sumez »

I think if you're experienced with Tetris Attack, some of the ability to see the combos coming might be applicable to Mr. Driller too. The cool difference here of course is that for Mr. Driller you want to actively prevent a lot of those combos.
Cata wrote:Other question too would be: how is the time bonus calculated? Is it a straight multiplier off of finish time of a course?
I don't know is this is applicable to DrillLand, but I made these conclusions based on Mr. Driller G footage, which I believe to be correct:

500m: Base score of 150,000 (with 500pt subtracted per second used)
1000m: Base score of 300,000
2000m: Base score of 600,000

Essentially, 150k per 500 meters, meaning the "time to beat" is 5 minutes on 500m, 10 minutes on 1000m, etc.
I think Driller 1 is something like 50,000 base score, with 100pt subtracted per second.
So in both of those games, the time score is a linear curve, yes, and I'm assuming every game since Driller G did it similarly.
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lewisit
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by lewisit »

Mr. Driller 1

500m: Base score of 60,000 (with 100pt subtracted per second used)
1000m: Base score of 300,000 (with 500pt subtracted per second used)

So both modes have the same 10 minute time limit for scoring a time bonus


Mr. Driller 2

500m: Base score of 150,000 (with 500pt subtracted per second used)
1000m: Base score of 300,000 (with 500pt subtracted per second used)
2000m: Base score of 600,000 (with 500pt subtracted per second used)
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Cata
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by Cata »

Ah ok so that’s how the score works!

Now if only I could figure out how to unlock usagi in drill land! :lol:
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by Sumez »

Haven't had that much time to play since I got my PCB (stupid sexy FF7 Remake), but I finally sat down and got my first 2000m clear on Mr. Driller G last night. I'm stoked.
The difference in difficulty between 1000m and 2000m doesn't feel too bad at first, but once you start making serious runs for it, it can get pretty staggering.

Image

I'm excited especially because this means I can finally drop the training wheels and stop playing as the robot.
Not sure if I should try going for perfect 1000m runs now, or just do a bunch of EX attempts to hone my skills.
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aerobert
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by aerobert »

Good job, Pinge showed me on whatsapp. :)
That's some serious speed. I have just managed to clear Medium for the first time last week. (in MrD2).
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Sumez
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by Sumez »

I think beating the mode without running out of air requires at least some speed. :) And I ran out of air twice.

According to mikehaggar, Driller 2 is a lot harder than G, at least on 2000m. So good luck with that heh.
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by aerobert »

Is it really? I thought the two games played basically identical as long as you use Susumu.

I did buy G recently but haven't received it. So maybe I should transfer to G then. All of the games in the series are reiterated up until Drill Land which is MrDG with fluff (and G is 2 with fluff). That was my though at least.
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Sumez
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by Sumez »

That was kind of my impression too, but this is the kind of simple game where small differences can have a big impact.

The major difference between 2 and G (outside of the EX stage and extra characters) is the boulder tiles which don't appear in 2, so I think they have more occurances of crystal blocks instead. While the boulders are incredibly dangerous, crystal blocks that cause chain reactions starting below your feet are probably more frequently the cause of deaths.
In the case of Egypt/2000m modes, Driller 2 reportedly gets a lot faster than the equivalent mode in G. Mikehaggar was talking about it on his Twitch stream yesterday.

Drill Land is very different though. I can't put my finger on exactly what it is, but something about the controls is off-putting to me, it never feels as fluid as G does, and some times I see a situation and feel that I should be able to react to it, but aren't.
Second, and I don't have the exact details about it, but something about the randomization of the color tiles in Drill Land also seems to make the 2000m a lot harder to me, though it might not be "harder" as much as it messes with my muscle memory.
I don't know if anyone can confirm/disprove, but it feels like it's much more likely to get larger connected blobs of a single color in 4 color sections, as well as occasional dry spells of a specific color, which can both create dangerous situations.
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by mikehaggar »

Hey all, sorry, I got used to not looking at this thread as there was rarely any activity.

Time bonuses for Driller 2 and G are simple. There is a time cutoff and every second below that earns you 500 pts.

Cutoffs are as stated.

500m: 5 min.
1000m: 10 min.
2000m: 20 min.

(I know this was already figured out but I figured I'd chime in, I wrote about these things extensively on my old defunct site misterdriller.com)

Second: Mr. Driller 2 Egypt is MUCH more difficult than Mr. Driller G Egypt.

It has much faster gravity and increases way earlier on...it has an overabundance of the crystal blocks which are much harder to manage (and more chaotic) than boulders...and air runs out faster.

My conclusion back when I first discovered this is that when the team made Mr. Driller 2, 2000m was so much harder than 1000m, so they decided to create a mode in between. So the new 2000m Egypt in G is much easier than 2000m in Driller 2 and is the natural progression in difficulty than 1000m. But to compensate for that, they created the North Pole, which is an expert difficulty mode in Driller G that far surpasses ANY prior difficulty. It still remains the pinnacle of Mr. Driller difficulty in ANY of the games. Check out my superplays below to see some of the differences. In the description of my perfect North Pole clear on youtube, I describe what makes this mode so hard.

Also, I do a weekly Mr. Driller G stream every Monday at 8PM PT! I have been grinding Space (the exclusive infinite mode on Driller G) to see how hard I can push myself. Hope some of you can make it! twitch.tv/djmikehaggar
Last edited by mikehaggar on Sat Dec 05, 2020 8:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by mikehaggar »

dojo_b wrote:Just wanted to thank folks for introducing me to this series, which I'm excited to try. I fell hard for Tetris Attack in college--the sheer scope for massive improvised combos, an ever-deepening well of skill and perception, an endless dream of graceful rearrangement. There isn't room in my life to do it justice but I still keep eyes peeled for a worthy successor.

I think there's definitely some strong potential for a broader thread on "puzzle action" titles, however the boundaries are understood. I personally would include "cutesy" arcade-style platformers like Bubble Bobble and Mighty Bomb Jack, for example; platformers, sure, but in some sense part of an alternative and semi-forgotten lineage eclipsed by Super Mario Bros. The animating values I would hope to see---and this is just me talking, while drinking---are the same as in the Ninja Gaiden thread and elsewhere (the gospel of BIL?): a spirit of informed appreciation, with a literate, comparative perspective; a valorizing of skilled play, broadly construed, but with room for personal style/goals and without a monomaniacal focus on score or speed.
I also used to run tetrisattack.net back in the 2000s. We hosted tons of strategies and superplays....welcome man! Good to see another TA head on here. Yes, both that and Mr. Driller are masterpieces of action puzzle game design!
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Marc
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by Marc »

Just picked up the Switch version, but reading above it seems that this might be a long way from the pretty simple DC game I used to be addicted to. I did have it on my Panasonic Q, but I don't remember a whole lot about it for some reason, other than I wasn't aware about the memory cards being region-tied, and the first time I attempted to load it, I lost 12 months worth of UK save data with no warning :D Looking forward to digging in later.
XBL & Switch: mjparker77 / PSN: BellyFullOfHell
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by Sumez »

Marc wrote:Just picked up the Switch version, but reading above it seems that this might be a long way from the pretty simple DC game I used to be addicted to.
Don't worry, all the special modes in Drill Land don't replace the main game. It still has the "World Tour" mode, which is completely traditional Driller.
The only things added since the first game is the boulders which is basically a block that'll never attach to other blocks, so it's always affected by gravity - and the silver blocks which are blocks that disappear on their own after a certain amount of time, which means the stage can shift unexpectedly without being caused by your own drilling.
Both aspects add a natural element of challenge what meshes well with the traditional game, so it shouldn't feel like anything's different.

The other modes, however, are massively different, especially in how they mostly remove the time pressure from the air meter. They are still fun, but World Tour mode is really where it's at.
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by aerobert »

Question: Anyone else have Driller G PCB? Are your menus "silen"t when selecting stage character etc? I noticed at some point there wasn't any music but effects like timer ticking and selection was heard. During gameplay all seems normal.
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by Sumez »

Do you have attract sound on?
mikehaggar was talking about an audio bug on the PCB that I never encountered, and so far it seems like it doesn't happen if attract sound is enabled.
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

I have my PCB's attract sound disabled and this bug crops up at random when you play a credit. It's rare though, and goes away if you play a credit immediately after. It seems like it's more likely to happen if the attract screen's been showing for a while between credits.
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by To Far Away Times »

So on the advice of this thread and a 50% off sale I took the plunge on Drill Land.

I've always been a fan of the series and have some great memories playing with friends but this one really kicks it up a level. The Drindy Adventure is so good. My kind of puzzle game for sure.
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To Far Away Times
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by To Far Away Times »

I played through the "attractions" in Drill Land last night. Man, this game punches way above its weight. For something that was no doubt a low budget game its pretty amazing how much love was poured into this. Drindy Adventure turns the game on its head in all the best ways. I think I'd want that expanded into a feature length game. It's seriously cool.

Also, the music is way too good. I was expecting some midi music but we've got lead vocals, choirs, cellos, violins, wood winds etc, and everything is done with real instruments, WTF? That was very unexpected and inspired.

If you're on the fence, go for it, this game rocks.
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by BIL »

Happy to see the Drill Land redux is out on PS4 tomorrow. :cool: I picked up the GC version forever ago (on the strength of this thread, in fact!) but as is my wont, never got around to it. Having more free time but currently working overseas, I've wanted to check this out.
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by Sumez »

To Far Away Times wrote: Also, the music is way too good. I was expecting some midi music but we've got lead vocals, choirs, cellos, violins, wood winds etc, and everything is done with real instruments, WTF? That was very unexpected and inspired.
Mr. Driller has a crazy soundtrack. It's like they just put a JRPG composer into a puzzle game and didn't tell him it was a puzzle game.
Go Shiina has done a few other notable (but generally niche) games like God Eater and Code Vein, but damn he's still underutilized.

I don't think Drill Land has any original music though, does it? IIRC it's all a compilation of tracks from the original game, 2/G and PS1 G.
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by davyK »

Just found this thread. Love Mr. Driller. First played the Dreamcast port. Bought a JP Gamecube to play Drill Land several years ago as it doesn't work with the Freeloader. :(

The Wii got a nice version too on its WiiWare service - worth a look.

I've played it casually as I don't play often enough to get good enough though. I see Drill Land has been redone so I might pick it up on Switch just to figure out all of the items in Druaga mode! :)
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

I'd like to everyone to feel my pain and share with you all the absolute worst Mr Driller video of all time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LRRIfZRsPg

Spoiler: player who isn't remotely good at Mr. Driller cranks the life stock to max (10!!) then proceeds to "speedrun" (for a live audience who has to suffer this indignity) by playing like crap while complaining how much he hates the game. Sets the tone of his run almost immediately with this gem:
"so this game is technically a Dig-Dug sequel, but it's a really bad one"
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BrianC
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by BrianC »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:I'd like to everyone to feel my pain and share with you all the absolute worst Mr Driller video of all time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LRRIfZRsPg

Spoiler: player who isn't remotely good at Mr. Driller cranks the life stock to max (10!!) then proceeds to "speedrun" (for a live audience who has to suffer this indignity) by playing like crap while complaining how much he hates the game. Sets the tone of his run almost immediately with this gem:
"so this game is technically a Dig-Dug sequel, but it's a really bad one"
Not to mention that he's using Holinger-Z and calls those rocks "eggs".
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Sumez
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by Sumez »

The rocks are clearly cookies.
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Re: Mr. Driller Great (and the series in general)

Post by XtraSmiley »

To Far Away Times wrote:So on the advice of this thread and a 50% off sale I took the plunge on Drill Land.

I've always been a fan of the series and have some great memories playing with friends but this one really kicks it up a level. The Drindy Adventure is so good. My kind of puzzle game for sure.
So I've been enjoying my Mr. D 1-G PCBs and I finally took the plunge on the PS4 version of the from Amazon.jp. $22 USD shipped!

Man, it's sooooooo good! Thanks thread. I've made my way through the level 1 and beat the story, now to work the rest of the levels.

What a great game for $20. In case anyone is wondering, the Japanese one defaults to English when you pop the disc in.
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