Three years following the release of the first game, Namco developed this sequel titled Dig Dug II: Trouble in Paradise, where Taizo Hori, having seen familiar foes ruin his vacation, takes his monster hunting to island surfaces rather than drilling underground, and he must travel across 72 islands in order to save them from the monster attacks. It was initially released in the arcades of Japan before home versions saw international distribution. This time he can use his jackhammer to create fissures in the islands and cause separated portions to sink into the ocean and drown whatever has failed to escape when it sinks, but Taizo must be careful or he will fall into the ocean and drown.
In 1986, Dig Dug II was first ported on the Famicom on April 18 and later was published overseas for the Nintendo Entertainment System by Bandai's North American division during December 1989, then released on the Famicom Disk System on August 31, 1990. The game was ported on the Sharp X68000 on February 24th, 1995. The game was also reissued in the Namco Museum Battle Collection on the PlayStation Portable in 2005 and later released as part of Namco Museum DS on the Nintendo DS in 2007. It was in 2008's Namco Virtual Arcade on the Xbox 360 and saw a standalone release on the Wii as part of the Virtual Console on October 20 of 2009. The game was later were released as part of Namco Museum: Mega Mix for the Wii exclusively in North America. Dig Dug Island was a 2008 Microsoft Windows game based on II and an online game until shut down in early 2009. The NES version was ported to the Nintendo Switch Online service for classic games, and the arcade version was ported by Hamster to the Nintendo Switch and the PlayStation 4 as part of their Arcade Archives lineup of classics.
Tropes:
- Accidental Suicide: Taizo Hori can drown if he disconnects a portion of the island and fails to get off it in time before it sinks into the ocean.
- Breath Weapon: Fygar is still the fire-breathing dragon as usual.
- Busman's Holiday: Taizo Hori was on vacation at the islands until his old foes Fygar and Pooka arrived to cause trouble.
- Collision Damage: One of the ways Taizo Hori can still die is if he collides with touches an enemy.
- Endless Game: As in the previous game, the game keeps playing on and on until Dig Dug loses his last life.
- Genre Shift: It went from being a side-view digger of the original game to a top-down adventure.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Taizo can drown if he does not get off the portion of the island he separated via fissures as these portions of the islands can sink into the ocean.
- Improbable Weapon User: Dig Dug can cause fissures in islands with his jackhammer and cause separated island masses to sink into the ocean and take enemies that failed to get to stable land to drown in the ocean.
- Kill It with Fire: As with the first game, Taizo can still die if scorched with Fygar's flames.
- No Ending: The game does not end as Taizo continues going from island to island as he hunts the monsters.
- Super Drowning Skills: If anyone, including Taizo, were stuck on part of an island when it sinks into the ocean, they will drown.
- Suicide by Sea: When one last enemy, or up to three in later levels, remain(s) they try to flee Taizo by drowning themself (or themselves) in the ocean.
- This Is a Drill: Here, your character gets a jackhammer, which can be used to knock out large sections of the island you're on to eliminate multiple enemies at once. (Less dramatically, you can create more fissures, which they can only cross in ghost form.)
- Too Dumb to Live: If Taizo takes too long to get off an island portion about to fall into the ocean, he will drown.