7. Arcade Game Series: Dig Dug Misc Achievements

All of the miscellaneous achievements are covered here. You'll always want to use Round 1 for every single one of these achievements since it's the easiest level. It's also a good idea for you to have already obtained all of the food achievements beforehand so you at least have a good amount of experience with playing the game. The last two are considered the toughest to get out of the whole list, so you're not out of the woods yet.

Surface Assassin/Clean Harpoon

The best place to do both of these achievements is Round 1, because you can easily earn both at the same time at a very low difficulty. When the round starts, just climb straight up to the surface and defeat all the enemies as they come to you with your harpoon. This shouldn't take more than a minute.

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Rocks

There are some achievements related to dropping rocks on enemies too. You might have gotten the first one, 2 Enemies, on accident due to how simple it is to kill two enemies with a single rock. Killing four at once, though, takes a bit more effort, albeit not a whole lot. Boot up Round 1 again and dig down to the same level as the one Pygar is, then dig to his tunnel so it connects with yours. Then dig one space to the right of where you stopped before digging downwards again. Head to the very bottom of the screen, underneath the long Pooka tunnel, and then dig upwards underneath the rock to the right of the very same Pooka. Turn around and just keep pumping the Pygar chasing you with air, letting it deflate so it doesn't die, and you'll see that the other Pooka have started making their way over to you too. Hold your position just underneath the rock until the Pooka from above reaches the very end of the rock's space; dig the rock out at that very moment, and it should collapse on all four enemies. If not, try again until you get it right, because this is by far the easiest and least time consuming way of getting these achievements out of the way.

You'll kill four enemies with one stone, but you'll kill three birds too; by doing the 4 Enemies achievement this way, you'll also earn another for defeating all the enemies in a round with only rocks.

Dig

For this achievement, you'll have to dig through every single space on the screen, including those which were already dug out, like enemy tunnels and the one you used to get to the starting point. The only thing left on screen will be few clods of dirt at the very top near the surface. Setting the game to five lives should be obvious for this one.

Start off by killing the Pygar immediately, then the Pooka to the lower right. You'll want to have a good positioning of your two enemies on screen (only one will cause it to run away), and having both at the top works pretty well. Once those two are dead, start digging horizontal tunnels upwards from here towards the top of the stage. When the other two Pooka get in your way, hit 'em once or twice with your harpoon so you can walk through them and continue digging. They'll speed up if you've been alive for too long, so make sure you quickly stun them every time they start moving when they're behind you.

When you hit the surface, dig down the far left column of dirt and continue with your horizontal tunnels on the lower half of the screen. Remember, dig through even the tunnels that already existed by default. Rocks will very likely never fall on your Pooka buddies, so don't worry too much about that. By finishing all of these tunnels, you'll no longer have to worry about the Pooka phasing through dirt. Now it's time to dig vertically. Start wherever you please and do what you think is best to throw the Pooka off; with more and more columns dug out, the Pooka will be able to change direction at a moment's notice, which is a lot worse than you think it is.

If this is too confusing for you to understand in words, you can always skim through the video above to get the general idea of what to do. If you did everything right and dug through absolutely every single tile of dirt on the screen, you should get this achievement within a matter of seconds.

  • Dig

    Dig through the entire area on any Round!

    Dig
    Offline Mode - These achievements require play in game modes that do not necessitate a connection to any online services.Single Player - These achievements can be obtained by a single player.

Centurion

This is going to be a really frustrating achievement. You have to kill at least 100 enemies in a single playthrough of the game, and it's going to be tough even with five lives. At the end of Round 15, you will have encountered a total of 101 enemies, so the achievement should pop around then or after you take out a few enemies in Round 16. The difference in this is whether or not you let a bunch of enemies escape off the top of the screen as a round is ending, so it's a good idea to start with the higher-placed enemies in the easier rounds.

There are a few really good tips to take into this run. First, go into the game settings and set Extra Lives to 20000/50000/-----. You're going to need that extra life at 20,000 points, and although you probably won't hit 50,000, it wouldn't hurt to have another in the off-chance that you do. Secondly, you can send the tip of your harpoon through very thin layers of dirt, which will allow you to take out enemies in tunnels without connecting your tunnel to theirs. The one catch with this is that tunnels with two enemies are pretty risky; you might pin one enemy and stop him from moving, but the other might phase through the dirt and kill you in a second. Finally, you can attack much faster up close, and if you move after attacking. To reiterate, attack an enemy, then move towards it for a split second, then attack again. Repeat this process until that enemy is dead. This saves you from a lot of close calls and otherwise deadly situations since you'll be able to destroy an enemy or quickly inflate him so you can deal with another.

This achievement might take you 10 minutes or so on a successful run, but it's very likely that you won't have this on your very first attempt. If you're not familiar with the tips provided, you can try all of them out on Round 1 as many times as you want.

  • Centurion

    Defeat 100 enemies on a single playthrough!

    Centurion
    Offline Mode - These achievements require play in game modes that do not necessitate a connection to any online services.Single Player - These achievements can be obtained by a single player.Missable - These achievements can be missed.

Rambler

Odds are that you'll be having the most trouble with this one, even compared to Centurion. It's one of those things that you're somehow better at the next day, so if you've gotten all 19 of the other achievements up to this point in one sitting, don't expect to get it the same day. When you do sit down the next day, maybe put on some different music. Even an 8Bit enthusiast such as myself got sick of the music in this game after a while. This achievement is going to require the most mental preparation out of all of these, so this really might be as important as as knowing what to do.

This is a completely separate beast from the Dig achievement, but the strategies used for it still hold. Before, you had to dig up the entire screen once, but this time you need to dig 1000 spaces in one single run. That's right, it's not cumulative, and that's what makes it such a doozy. Each screen has 210 spaces in it, not including the pre-dug tunnels, so you'll be given a bit less than 200 each round. But the chances of you digging out the entire screen more than twice, if even that much, is pretty darn low anyways.

For whatever reason, multiple people (including myself) have agreed that trying to dig up and down instead of horizontally works better for them. Just dig out as much as you can in a level while also staying as safe as possible. For the first two levels, you shouldn't have any problems with keeping enemies away as you dig by using the strategies in Dig, but you're going to have to abandon them for anything past Round 2. Enemies are just too fast and in too high numbers to keep up with, so the most optimal way to deal with the last two enemies at the end of your rounds is to kill one while the other is near the bottom of the screen. That way, you'll get as much time as possible to continue digging as he escapes to the top left.

Assuming you had good enough runs on your first few rounds, you should get this achievement around Round 8 or Round 9. But, since you've probably finished Centurion before this, you should be more than prepared to reach those rounds than ever. The achievement will pop mid-round, so you'll be able to quit your run as soon as you get it.

  • Rambler

    Dig 1000 spaces! (1 space is the same size as 1 character)

    Rambler
    Offline Mode - These achievements require play in game modes that do not necessitate a connection to any online services.Single Player - These achievements can be obtained by a single player.

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