First Impressions: G.G. Series Drilling Attack

It's not hard to see why we keep on downloading G.G. Series games to preview because as many as there are, they all seem to have been made by people who care about delivering a quality slice of simple gaming fun. That they're only 200 Points each is just icing on the electron cake of arcade goodness.

Drilling Attack features a robot (or person in chunky powered armor) with drills for arms attacking the simple goal of breaking through special blocks to reach a key card and then finding the exit door for the level. Each level is multiple screens in size and you can only jump up one block at a time so you may well wonder how you can accomplish this task through 20 stages, but not to worry, with a simple press of the A button you can transform into a zooming drill missile and travel either vertically or horizontally, breaking through any blocks (or enemy robots) in your way. You can trigger this "boost mode" after you make a jump, noting that you won't stop until you hit something or press the jump button (though you can change direction mid-boost multiple times if need be). If you still have some boost left in your meter you can trigger it to recover from a fall – which is always a good thing after smacking into a wall above a pit fillled with wicked pink spiky things!

You'll need to do a bit of walking to let your boost metre recharge after a long flight, but you're not completely defenseless as you can lash out with a drill arm if enemy robots are too close to comfort whilst you're waiting to take flight again. Whilst you wait you can also take the time to press the X button in order to pan the camera about to plan your route to the next platform. Though you can simply get the key card and go, breaking all the breakable blocks is worthwhile to find the glowing bonus panels for extra points; if you find all of them you'll get a nice 10,000 point bonus – sweet! Your high score, highest stage reached and biggest bonus achieved are all recorded in the top panel to spur you on to do better next time.

You only have one life and only occasional health items appear, so you'll want to do your best to avoid spikes and shots from enemy robots if you want to stay in the game. Every five stages you'll face off against a boss consisting of a static gun emplacement that likes to fire bursts of shots at you and can only be destroyed by boost drilling at vulnerable spots that pop out of its sides periodically. Interestingly, unlike most G.G. Series games you'll find that you can choose to start play on any of the stages you've already completed the next time you play – though you'll clearly end up with a lower score from playing less levels in one sitting.

As with other games in the Series the graphics are finely detailed sprites that wouldn't look out of place on a 16-bit console and there's a nice looped game tune to complete the illusion you're playing a forgotten arcade/console classic. We're curious to see if the quality continues through the rest of the series, which now numbers sixteen titles as of this writing. If so we say carry on making them Suzak, you crazy mad arcade wizards, and thank you Genterprise for publishing them!