An adorable clown with a big ball in hand and a horde of enemies at his back — that's the image that etches itself into the memory of anyone who has ever played Mr. Do! This maze arcade game belongs among the titles that managed to catchily blend two proven ingredients of their era: digging tunnels in the style of Dig Dug and collecting treasures like in Pac-Man. The result is gameplay that, even after decades, can glue a person to the controller.
The principle is brilliantly simple. You control the clown Mr. Do!, who digs through soil full of cherries. Your task is to collect all the fruit, or else eliminate all the enemies — either with a thrown, bouncing ball, or with a cleverly dropped giant apple that crushes anyone who wanders beneath it. The physics of the falling fruit is the very heart of the whole game: you have to anticipate where the enemies will rush and time the trap so it falls at just the right moment.
Each level has its own rhythm and a strategic depth you wouldn't expect from such a candy-colored game. Collecting the letters E-X-T-R-A from defeated opponents opens bonus rounds and extra lives, so risking a fight pays off. What's more, the game constantly pushes the pace — the longer you hesitate, the more aggressive the enemies become. It's a constant switching between cautious digging and risky hunting.
On the ColecoVision, Mr. Do! found a home that suited it. The console was renowned for handling arcade ports more faithfully than the competition of its generation, and the game's colorful, legible graphics benefited from that nicely. For players in the early 1980s, it was one of the titles that made having the arcade at home in the living room worthwhile.
Mr. Do! became so popular that it kicked off a whole little series of sequels and remains, to this day, one of the beloved classics of the golden age of arcade cabinets. It's a game that won't let you catch your breath, yet at the same time rewards you for cleverness and foresight — a rare combination that today's titles often search for in vain.
Why play: For a catchy blend of maze, digging and timed traps that can still be tense and surprisingly strategic today.
Game 4 of 16 for ColecoVision
