On the Cutting Room Floor – Drill Dozer (Episode 4)

If you know me, you know that there are TONS AND TONS of videogames I’ve never played. Sadly, although I consider myself to be a “hardcore” gamer, I really am not compared to most “gamers”. The reason for that is because, unlike other more productive people, I can never seem to find the time to play games. Period.

In fact, my most played system as of late has been my Nintendo 3DS, and that’s simply because it is the easiest system to play when I’m sitting on the throne…. And cause I’m a hardcore Nintendo fanboy to boot.

So I thought it would be fun to go through some of the games I’d LOVE to play and still plan on playing someday, but never have up to this point and why I want to play them. Maybe I’ll get to them at some point, and hopefully soon; but maybe not. We’ll see. Enjoy.

EPISODE #4 – DRILL DOZER
Released: 2005
System: Game Boy Advanced
Re-Released: Never
Genre: Platformer
Developed By: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo
Creator: Ken Sugimori and Satoshi Tajiri (creators of Pokemon)
Is There A Digital Version?: No

Drill Dozer is a fantastic, award-winning platformer from developer Game Freak. Does the name sound familiar? If so, you recognize it because of Pokemon. Game Freak is the company that developed and created Pokemon for publisher Nintendo, before becoming acquired by Nintendo and officially becoming a Nintendo second party developer. There have been very, very few games created by Game Freak outside of Pokemon, especially post-Pokemon.

A few they did develop include 1991’s Game Boy puzzler Yoshi, the Game Boy Pocket’s 1998 accessory the “Game Boy Camera”, the Hudson Soft-published Mendel Palace for NES in 1989, the Sega Genesis action classic Pulseman for publisher Sega, and several games published by Sony including Click Medic for PlayStation One (1999) and the SNES, Sony-published titles Smart Ball 1 aka Jerry Boy in Japanese (1991) and Smart Ball 2 (1994).

However arguably their best and most recognized non-Pokemon title is a little-known, critically acclaimed GBA game called… Drill Dozer. In Japan it was called “Screw Breaker”. I kinda like the sound of the latter one better…

When making Pokemon games and new versions of the same Pokemon game continuously, it must be really hard to find time to create an all-new game, but that was the goal with Drill Dozer, and the game immediately caught notice of the press for it’s unique drilling mechanics, excellent platform gameplay and fun world, characters and art design.

From what I know about Drill Dozer, the game has you playing as a girl that drives a mech-style machine she sits in that sports a giant drill sticking out of its front. The hook comes in the way you use the drill to solve puzzles and interact with the environment in this unique side-scrolling platformer. Game Freak and Satoshi Tajiri wanted to use unique features of the Game Boy Advance system, including buttons that they never had to use in the extremely simple, RPG gameplay of Pokemon.

This lead them to the Game Boy Advance’s newest and biggest change from the original Game Boy… The addition of two shoulder buttons, L and R, giving it four buttons total instead of the Game Boy’s two. Thus, the idea of Drill Dozer is that the player must use the R Button to spin the drill to the right, and the L Button to spin it to the Left. These mechanics are cleverly implemented into the game as the player must quickly and precisely drill objects and enemies in different directions to defeat them, or clear obstacles. And if the player holds the button down for too long, the drill will overheat!

Here’s a look at Drill Dozer in action!

Upon release Drill Dozer was hailed as an excellent game and got great reviews from all publications. It was even nominated for a few awards, including Game Boy Advance Game of the Year and Platformer of the Year.

For these reasons, the game has always remained a “MAN I SO WANT TO PLAY THIS!” title on my list and remained a “must-buy” for years and years after its release. I finally got around to buying it one day as the GBA was weaning out, and a store was selling it for super cheap. Thus I picked it up with a huge smile on my face… and it has sat on my shelf, still shrink-wrapped, ever since! DAMN IT! >_<

And now that I realize I have a shrink-wrapped copy of this little-known GBA gem, a part of me demands to never open it… *sigh* Curse my collecting nature!

Previous Episodes of “On the Cutting Room Floor”:
* On the Cutting Room Floor Episode 3 – Psychonauts
* On the Cutting Room Floor Episode 2 – Silent Hill 3
* Episode 1 – On the Cutting Room Floor: Games I’ve Yet to Play – EarthBound