Mr. Do!

The Good
There was once a man in a pom-pom hat called Mr. Do!. His favorite food is cherries, and so one day, he decided to create ten cherry orchards. He was always proud of his orchards, as he was able to harvest a bunch of cherries that he could eat for dessert. Sadly, all of this had changes. You see, when Mr. Do! starts harvesting his cherries, pests enter and do their best to stop him in his tracks, and his only line of defense is his power ball, which he can throw at them to wipe them out.

Mr. Do! will have to wait several seconds before he gets his ball back, so he can't wipe out another one immediately. He can also make apples squash the pests, and he does this by running underneath the apple while the pests follow him everywhere that he goes. But he, too, will be squashed by an apple if he doesn't get out of the way. When one of the pests touches him, he'll lose one of his three lives. Lose every one of them, and the game is over.

As Mr. Do!, you must collect all the cherries in the orchard in order to advance to the next one. The cherries are often lined up in eights, and notice that a tone is heard if you collect one. These tones will go up a note if you collect all the cherries at once, without any pauses. If you do, you are awarded bonus points. Once you have collected enough cherries, an alpha monster will appear, who bears one of the letters in EXTRA. Like the pests, it will chase you until you shoot your power ball at it, then that letter will be highlighted. If you manage to kill alpha monsters bearing all the letters in EXTRA, a screen will appear, which sees Mr. Do! shooting a big monster, which drops a Mr. Do! in the status bar. While all of this goes on, you get to listen to the theme from Astro Boy, a japanese manga cartoon that I used to watch when I was still a kid. When there can be no enemies in the orchards, some food appears instead. Getting this will cause some blue monsters to appear, as well as an alpha monster.

The C64 version of Mr. Do! remains close to the original arcade game. The music and sounds are all there. The graphics even meet the standards of the original.

The Bad
But what this version lacks is a high-score table, yet the original arcade game had one. This means that if you played a couple of games, you have no idea how well you scored, compared to your previous games.

The Bottom Line
You know, some people say that Mr. Do! is a lot like Dig Dug, but I disagree with that one. The game was a success with the kiddies that at least three other Mr. Do! games were made: Mr. Do's Castle, Mr. Do's Wild Ride, and Do! Run Run. Of these three, Mr. Do's Castle made it to home computers and consoles. There's even a game called Neo Mr. Do!, but as the name suggests, it was available only for the Neo Geo, which, at the time of writing, is still yet to be documented here at MobyGames.

This version could have been improved by allowing you to collect other fruit besides cherries, oranges and lemons, for example. If this game was remade by a company that brought the Mr. Do! franchise, then the game would be enhanced by incorporating 3-D graphics into the game, and adding Mr. Do's arch-nemesis, simply called Mr. Don't!

Rating: ****