Dig Dug II (Arcade)

Dig Dug II is the Japanese only sequel to Dig Dug. Instead of digging holes, you drill off chunks of an island to kill monsters.

Easter Egg#

Just like most Namco arcade games, this one has a service screen Easter Egg. Enter service mode and play sound 1B. Then press the Service switch to be taken to the grid screen. Then press Down (x2), Right, Left (x2), Down (x2), Left (x3), Up (x2). Finally, press the service switch again and you should hear a jingle and the screen should start to scroll to the right to a play field of the letter o. The os will slowly disappear spelling out:

DIGDUGII
© 1985
NAMCO
  LTD.

At this point, the game will get into an infinite loop and you'll have to restart.

Oddities#

Unused Dip Switch Counter#

At the values 0x4810 and 0x4811 in the lower nibbles lives an 8-Bit counter that counts the number of times that the unused second set of 8 dip switches changes state. Purpose is unknown as it is not referenced in the code, aside from the reset routine which returns the value to 0. It seems to be controlled by the 56xx Micro controller chip, since that is where it's IO lives in the memory map and it handles the dip switches.

Version Differences#

Dig Dug II has two ROM sets labeled New and Old. Old seems to be feature complete but is missing a few things and has minor differences compared to New.

Rom Header#

...............
...............

1985 NAMCO ALL R
IGHTS RESERVED..

Old is missing ROM headers on the Program ROMs 1B and 1D

Color Differences#

The ROM that contains the sprites' color palettes were changed between New and Old causing these differences

Old	New

Taizo Hori's pump is a bit glitched in Old; the tube is duplicated and misaligned with the main body, and the nozzle uses the wrong palette. Both of these errors were fixed in New.

Old	New

The score text from popping an enemy is blue in Old and yellow in New.

Old	New

The score text from drilling out the floor beneath an enemy is flashing light blue and red in Old, while in New it is just flashing pink.

Other Differences#

The Level order has been shifted around

The Namco Easter Egg has not been added yet.