You are Dig Dug, the underground miner. With your jet-powered shovel, you create intricate subterranean mazes. Ever on the watch for vauluable vegetable prizes, you must also look out for the fierce, fire breathing Fygar and the mean balloon-like Pooka that lurk underground. Worse Pooka and Fygar can turn into spooky ghosts that appear out of nowhere! You can destroy meanies by pumping them up with your fire button until they burst, or by dropping boulders on them. To drop a boulder, dig under a rock, then move out of the way fast! The falling rock will crush any close-pursuing meanies. (It will crush you as well, if you don't get out of the way!)

Your underground mine is composed of four layers of dirt. You receive more points for blowing up meanies in the bottom layers than the top soil. A valuable prize, usually a vegetable, appears once per round at the same spot were you started digging. It appears for only a few seconds so watch carefully for it! A round ends when you destroy all the meanies or when the last meanie escapes. In later rounds game play becomes more difficult, and the prizes more valuable. You start the game with five lives, and ear a bonus life at 20,000 points and every 50,000 points. The maximum lifes you can have at any one time is eight.