Remake This… The Dig

There’s something out there…

You may have noticed that we have something of a soft spot for the old point-and-click adventures in LucasArts’ back catalogue, and though we’re ever so grateful Monkey Island is getting the recognition it deserves, there are still plenty of others out there. The Dig is another such title, and it incredibly featured an asteroid hurtling towards Earth. With the US scrambling a team of diggers together (to plant a nuke, no doubt), the game runs scarily close to both the plots of Armageddon and Deep Impact, although The Dig predates both films by some years.

The action film similarities end there, however, as there happens to be far more going on in The Dig than simply an asteroid heading towards our planet. It may have been slightly on the short side, but still presented players with a cinematic and cerebral challenge that took the lead characters across not only light-years, but also dimensions.

The Dig remains one of the classic point-and-click adventures, and one of the only ones to use very early pre-rendered backgrounds and CGI from Sean Clark, who would later work for Industrial Light and Magic. It’s amazing to think that The Dig may have inspired some of the ‘asteroid’ movies of a few years ago, but as an adventure game, this is a little-known gem and fondly remembered by those who played it.

We know we go on about the old SCUMM VM games, but even if LucasArts released them onto XBLA in their original forms, we’d be very happy indeed. More people need to play these games.