As of a few weeks ago, Mr. Driller 2 has been emulated! This was a good excuse for me to get obsessed with Mr. Driller all over again, and last night I finally got a perfect run on 1000m mode:
Mr. Driller is easily one of my favorite games ever made, and you should give it a try if you're at all interested in arcade action games! I've seen a lot of people avoid the game because they see a bunch of colored blocks disappearing and they assume it's a puzzle game where you have to set up chains of explosions and so on, but all you're trying to do is drill downwards without getting crushed. My hot take is that it's more of a platformer than a puzzle game, and the closest thing to a "chain" that you ever have to set up is looking upwards at the block that's about to fall on you, then looking to the side to see if there are any other blocks of the same color that it will stick to before it reaches you.
The only complaint I have about the game is that one day I want to design a brand new game that scratches the same itch as it, but I'm not smart enough to do that yet. I feel exactly the same way about Umihara Kawase, come to think of it. Ah, game design jealousy...
edit: I went back and cleared the original Mr. Driller on Very Hard mode too! What a fantastic game...
