I bought the late GBA title Drill Dozer a few months ago based on the fact that it was made by GameFreak (the Pokey-man guys) and was super cheap at Target. Aside from that, I knew nothing about the game other than what I heard from EGM’s glowing review a few years ago.

Drill Dozer is essentially an SNES game that somehow got stuck in limbo and emerged 10 years later on the GBA. Well, that’s how it feels anyway. It’s a somewhat slow paced action/puzzle platformer that features a rag tag group of some rather unlikable character designs. The game reminds me of an SNES title (aside from graphics) because the whole concept is designed around the L and R triggers, sort of like the first few SNES games where Nintendo built games around those two triggers (see F-Zero and Pilot Wings).

I’m going to be completely honest here, I played 75% of Drill Dozer while taking a shit. It was enjoyable enough to keep me company while I did my business, but I was never so into it where I needed to play it off the ‘ol hopper. In fact, it’s the most perfect toilet game ever conceived, as the game lets players save their progress just about any where they please. I appreciated the occasionally smart design choices, and there are a handful of really creative boss battles, but playing it off toilet just never happened.

The goal of the whole game is to drill everything and everywhere. Activating the drill is as simple as holding down the R-button, and in each stage the player collects 2 different gears so that they can drill… well… longer, faster, and harder. Most of the game was a breeze with only one boss battle really getting on my nerves. In fact, it wasn’t until after I beat the game where I found true strokes of genius. You can buy extra stages using chips (money) that are collected throughout the game. I didn’t have much intention of going back to these stages but they’re the best part of the game. These extra stages take advantage of everything you’ve learned and really pile on the challenge. I knew there was some crazy depth to the simple mechanics, and it really shows in the extra stages. Each stage is ridiculously hard, and only the best Dozer players will find their way through them.

The extra stages even motivated me enough to find every single last piece of hidden treasure in the game, and it was around there when I started to play the game for fun and not just to pass the time by instead of reading the directions on tubes of Toothpaste.

I had some unexpected fun with Drill Dozer, and for the 10 dollar price point it’s being sold for at Target, I’d reccomend it.