Comments on: Baraduke (Namco, July 1985)

By: [I ♥ The PC Engine] Pac-Land @ Magweasel

[I ♥ The PC Engine] Pac-Land @ Magweasel — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 21:25:43 +0000

[...] then having Nintendo execute them a lot better later on and take all the credit. It happened with Baraduke, a 1985 arcade title that bears a lot of resemblance to Metroid, but it also happened with [...]

By: Ian Adams

Ian Adams — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:22:37 +0000

Oh, also worth mentioning, the game is also on the Namco collection for the Xbox360. So if YOU want to try dying over and over again four levels in, there’s a fairly accessible way.

By: Ian Adams

Ian Adams — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:13:43 +0000

Also worth noting: The main character in Baraduke ties into the Mr. Driller mythos. She’s (SPOILER) Hori Susumu’s (Mr. Driller) mom. So apparently at some point she slept with and possibly married Hori Taizo of Dig Dug fame. This is further touched on when parts of the Mr. Driller crew moved into outer space in the recent Star Trigon.

By: Mike D

Mike D — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:55:28 +0000

I second CJ: keep posting more awesome retro errata!

I also was struck by the similarity to Air Fortress; the structure of the game is different, but the design/mechanics of the player are very similar

Thank you for such an awesome blog. I am super pumped about the inline videos (I just wish google reader handled them properly).

By: CJ

CJ — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:27:03 +0000

This is excellent. Please continue posting more of these.

Also, this bears more than a passing resemblance to Air Fortress (The HAL game for the Famicom) yet I really am not seeing anyone making note of that. I wonder what the pedigree is there.

And finally, I really like that Namco has spent the past decade creating this internal mythology via the Mr Driller games that mostly just consists of the guy from Dig Dug being a broken and miserable man. It’s that consistency that keeps me coming back.