If you're known for developing the Pokémon series, you'd probably expect to have your hands rather full, near constantly. When would you ever get the time to be able to branch out into different things?
At some point in the early 2000s, Game Freak found some time to give us Drill Dozer, an action platformer for the Game Boy Advance that follows bandit gangs who like to do their work inside robots equipped with ruddy great big drills.
Hmm.
Fun Times
Drill Dozer gets going before you know it, as the Red Dozers roll into enemy territory to take back what's rightfully theirs. Though, given the nature of bandit gangs, I wouldn't be surprised if we stole this Red Diamond from someone else at some point. Anyway, that's not important right now. Let's just get it back.
If we're a master thief, we're not a very good one, falling at the first hurdle. Falling quite far, in fact. Landing on our noggin and knocking us loopy. Luckily, we're in control of heavy machinery, so our escape shouldn't be too much of an issue.
You move left and right as a normal, bulky platformer, but have a sizable jump and a short dash at your disposal too. But so do most platform heroes. What they don't have are giant drills that can spin in both directions, and chew through walls and enemies like they were nothing.
Sometimes, obstacles are more substantial than stone walls, and you'll need to have found another gear for your drill. To use your drill, you press and hold either shoulder button, spinning it up and letting it run wild before it slowly loses power and runs out, requiring you to spin it up all over again.
With extra gears, however, you can spin up your drill and - at the right time - shift into the next gear with another press of the shoulder button. Your drill gets louder, causes more carnage, and runs out slower. And it feels remarkably good. All you're doing is revving up a drill, but it's neat. It'd be even better if I were playing on an actual GBA, with Drill Dozer coming with an in-built rumble in its cartridge, to mimic the immense power of a drill.
We appear to have made our presence known. No biggy, just kick the drill into action and nudge an enemy to send them flying. You'd think all the gear overlays would get in the way, but there's not really a whole lot to focus on when you're using a drill, so they don't hamper your view that much.
Drill Dozer is very much a 2D platformer. There are jumps to make, hazards to avoid, enemies that get in the way and a simple path to find from one end of the map to the other. It's simple so far. You can't get lost, and drilling into walls and ceilings that don't lead anywhere often reward you with some energy to restore your health bar.
With another fancy self-repairing door in our way, we need to explore for another gear upgrade, which we soon find, and then terrorize everything with.
I want to stress that charging up your drill and shifting through its gears is quite pleasant. You can't do a whole lot once you start, essentially move in the direction you're facing, but with a fully charged 3-gear drill, rows of blocks and enemies just disappear. The rumble and the onscreen graphics make it something more than it is. It's just a drill. But when you're given the hint to switch gears and kick it up a notch, it's suddenly more than a drill. It's a drill dozer. Whatever one of those is.
A tank? You think you can defeat me in a tank? You have a giant hole in the front, about the size of my drill...
We escaped, but like all video game heroes after the first level, we lose all our cool toys and will have to unlock them all over again. Drill Dozer is set up with a map screen and separate levels, and with no need to hang around, we can dive right into the next part of the story - to return to where we just were, and this time, not fall down a pit.
There are some new tricks to learn in this stage. These jelly blocks can bounce us up to levels just out of our jump range. It took me a little while to figure out how to make use of them, but the idea is to jump up and drill into them, like a normal block, but then switch your drill into reverse by pushing the opposite shoulder button, at which point you're flung out and - with the help of a bouncy jelly block - pushed to where you want to go.
After some more platforming is another mini-boss, this one a weird tube on a production line, or something. Either way, aim up your drill up and screw up its insides until it blows up. I think every boss will be dealt with in a rather similar fashion if I'm honest...
There's not much to get wrong with Drill Dozer. Your timing might be off as you walk into enemies or stage hazards, or you might miss a drillable block somewhere, but so far (stage 2, remember), it sets itself up as an easy time. Point and drill, and you'll be done soon enough.
Until I got outside, I would have said that Drill Dozer looks quite good. Definitely the kind of chunky, colourful art style the Game Boy Advance was capable of dishing up. The outdoors, here at least, just looked a bit too flat and lifeless, compared to the factory interiors. Ah well. We can't have everything.
Ah, now you've got two tanks. Quite a test of my drill skills.
Frustrations
I ended up getting the timing (and/or the strategy) wrong with this challenge and did most of my damage during invincibility frames earned from getting hit by a missile. It's not recommended and certainly doesn't make me look like a professional.
Still, I got better and got rid of one threat. All that was left was a damaged tank... that switched up its attack patterns, and me - being greedy - thought I could ignore them and stick to what worked before.
I couldn't. Game Over. I could have paid some form of currency to try again but, after 30 or so minutes of action platforming with a drill, I think I'd had my fix.
Final Word
Drill Dozer is fun, for sure. The mere act of drilling has somehow been made interesting and is used to solve puzzles in ways that make sense but are somehow still cartoony nonsense. I'm sure that every possible use for a drill has been made into something in Drill Dozer.
As far as 2D platformers go, you're a little on the slow side, but you are piloting a giant drill, so that's perhaps to be expected. At the same time, as I say, you've got dashes and jumps and jelly blocks to help you hop and bounce around the place, so it's not like it's a slog to get anywhere. Considering you'll be spinning a drill every few seconds, you'll not find yourself in a rush anyway.
I'm not sure how much further I'll drill into Drill Dozer. It's definitely worth playing around with, but I don't know how invested I am. Clearly not enough to try that boss fight again, but there's at least some chance I'll replay it again sometime. Is it one of the greatest GBA games? I suppose it's up there, but there are plenty more choices that I'd opt for over this.
Still, it was entertaining while it lasted. That alone is worth something.
Fun Facts
While the game was translated into European languages, the translation efforts wouldn't be officially seen by Europeans until ten years later, with a Wii U Virtual Console release.
Drill Dozer, developed by Game Freak, first released in 2005.
Version played: Game Boy Advance, 2006, via emulation.