This Week In Retro: Mr. Do's Castle (Patreon)

September 1983: Heiankyo Harlequin

by Diamond Feit

In 1982, Japanese hardware manufacturer and game publisher Universal released Mr. Do! in arcades. In keeping with the company's track record, Mr. Do! transparently borrowed many mechanics from an established arcade hit—in this case, Dig Dug. Yet Universal's take on Namco's drill-em-up added enough distinct elements to give the game a flavor all its own, particularly the eponymous protagonist Mr. Do, a clown armed with a bouncing ball.

One year later, Universal bet again on Mr. Do, opting to turn the miniature mirthmaker into a franchise-supporting mascot character. Yet his second-ever video game would not carry on the legacy of his debut; despite the quick turnaround, Mr. Do's return to the spotlight shed nearly every element from his first appearance save for himself. In Japan, this 1983 follow-up carried the title Mr. Do! Vs. Unicorns, but the rest of the world got Mr. Do's Castle.

One reason I loved the original Mr. Do! as a child was its inscrutable nature, for even though it deliberately modeled its gameplay after Dig Dug, everything it brought to the table made no sense. Dig Dug had players digging underground and killing monsters, an activity that needs no explanation. In Mr. Do!, a clown must forge his own path to collect cherries while avoiding monsters, though he may eliminate them with careful use of a magic ball or by crushing them with apples.

Mr. Do's Castle washes its hands of all that, swapping the subterranean for the sturdiness of a stone structure adorned with ladders and platforms. Mr. Do begins each stage at the very bottom of the screen as his opponents descend upon him from the highest floor. To win, Mr. Do must destroy all who oppose him or take the pacifist route and smack all the cherry blocks with his new tool of choice, a hammer.

I call it a tool rather than a weapon because Mr. Do's hammer can't deal damage directly. It can, however, hit the floor with enough force to knock blocks out of place, creating a gap wide enough to fall through. These gaps slow down his pursuers as they need a few seconds to recover their footing should they fall in. More to the point, falling blocks will crush any creature beneath them, making them the primary means to rub out enemies. Select platforms will have a pair of skull blocks; striking these will smash an entire row of blocks at once, flattening any foe who might be caught between them.

The arcade flyer describes Mr. Do's newfound rivals in this game as unicorns, but they don't resemble any traditional depiction of those fictional creatures that I've ever seen. They have the distinction of a single horn on their forehead, but they are stocky, bipedal creatures who lack the long legs or speed of a horse. Then again, I suppose a quadruped would find ladders extremely difficult to navigate, likely tumbling to the ground the moment they tried to support their full weight on a single hoof.

With action designed around platforming, climbing, and trapping relentless enemies in small holes, Mr. Do's Castle seems, to modern eyes, like a take on Brøderbund's classic Lode Runner. Yet that game debuted just months earlier in 1983, nowhere near enough time to design and publish a clone as sophisticated as this. Rather, Universal opted to revisit the company's own past, as Mr. Do's Castle bears a strong resemblance to Universal's first arcade hit, 1980's Space Panic. That release, which predated Donkey Kong making it one of the first-ever platform action games, had players digging pits to capture aliens.

However, as savvy Retronauts fans should know by now, any game with aliens, shovels, and digging is really a riff on 1979's Heiankyo Alien. Imagine my surprise in preparing for this column when I learned that a childhood favorite arcade game about a clown hitting blocks with a hammer is just two steps removed from such a pivotal keystone in gaming history.

Mr. Do's Castle, like its predecessor, did well enough in arcades to warrant ports to consoles and home computers at the time, and two new Mr. Do games would arrive just one year later. Yet each subsequent title would introduce new mechanics, making the only constant in the series the presence of Universal's now-famous clown.

I found a lot to like about Mr. Do's Castle: The unicorns scurry about in an amusing manner, the looping background music puts a smile on my face, and whacking blocks with a mallet never gets old. The new platforming aspect makes Mr. Do's Castle much harder than the first game though, as the need to rely on ladders as a means of escape restricts Mr. Do's ability to run away. The original game, as did Dig Dug before it, gave players the freedom to move in any direction and make their own path through the stage, whereas the castle has a predetermined floor plan.

Surprisingly, neither Mr. Do! nor Mr. Do's Castle would reach the NES, an omission that helped me forget all about the hardest-working clown in video games. I eventually revisited both titles via emulation, but I'm surprised by how quickly Mr. Do seems to have left our collective gamer memory. He never had a PS2-era revival or appeared in any retro compilations, and as of this writing, no Mr. Do games have appeared in Hamster's ongoing Arcade Archives series of modern ports. It would appear that Mr. Do no longer does.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.