Gather ’round, dear retro enthusiasts, for I have a delightful tale to tell you today: the tale of Return of the Fungi.
Those of you who are familiar with your Editor’s work elsewhere on the Internet will doubtless be aware that he hosts several regular series of retrospective gameplay videos with commentary over on his YouTube channel, including one that focuses on games for the Atari 8-bit home computers: Atari A to Z. It is this series where this story begins — but first, a little context.
I grew up with Atari 8-bit home computers. They were the home computers that I first learned how to use — how to play games on them, how to educate myself in various fields, how to do vaguely productive things and even how to program them to a limited extent. They are, it’s fair to say, extremely special to me — which is why I was eager to celebrate them using today’s technology online, such as YouTube.
With how important those machines are to me, the early gaming experiences I had on those Atari 8-bit computers have ended up being things that I have looked back on fondly for my whole life. And among those games were a pair of titles named Diamonds and Dan Strikes Back from an independent creator named Simon Hunt, who managed to get his work published through English Software.
I revisited both of these games for my Atari A to Z series and found that they were both still a great deal of fun. I really enjoyed revisiting them — and I often find myself returning to them both when I just fancy a quick blast on something that isn’t too complicated, but which is still challenging and satisfying. They are, it’s fair to say, probably some of my favourite games on Atari 8-bit.
For the unfamiliar, Diamonds is a “dirt and boulders” game in which you take on the role of Digger Dan, a little blue man, as he attempts to dig through the ground and acquire as many diamonds as possible. Keen to stop him in this endeavour is Brian the Blob, a bouncy green thing who is also rather keen to get his hands on shiny things. And Brian has friends, each of whom have their own unique behaviour in that distinctly 8-bit sort of way.
Dan Strikes Back, the sequel to Diamonds, picks up the story a while after the original game. Yes, unlike many other arcade-style games of the period, Diamonds had an actual ending; beat all of its 16 levels (with 4 screens each) and Dan would get his hands on The Great Diamond. A happy ending… until Brian the Blob nicks off with said giant gemstone and locks it deep within his subterranean and very deadly vault.
Never one to be undeterred by the prospect of almost-certain death, Digger Dan makes his way into Brian’s vault, trampling mushrooms, collecting diamonds, opening doors, avoiding various creepy crawlies and, of course, attempting to outwit Brian himself. Assuming you’re successful in your mission, Dan reclaims The Great Diamond and all is well. And that was that.
Or so I thought. While researching Diamonds and Dan Strikes Back for the Atari A to Z series, I discovered that creator Simon Hunt had originally intended the games to be a trilogy, with their titles loosely inspired by Star Wars. You’d have Diamonds first, then Dan Strikes Back (being the “Empire Strikes Back” equivalent) — and finally there would be a third installment called Return of the Fungi (after “Return of the Jedi”). Only one problem — that third installment never got past the planning phase and a brief title sequence that Hunt put together in 1986.
Jokingly, I challenged the still very active Atari 8-bit enthusiast and developer community to put together the third installment in the Digger Dan trilogy for themselves so we could finally see what Return of the Fungi might be like once and for all.
I did not expect any response. And the last thing I expected was a response from Digger Dan’s creator himself.
Yes, indeed, in April of 2021, Simon Hunt himself reached out to me to accept my challenge and inform me that he was actually going to put together Return of the Fungi and complete the Digger Dan trilogy once and for all. Moreover, as we continued to correspond over the course of the following months, it became clear that Hunt was serious about making this a top-quality game.
He particularly paid attention to things that I had picked out in other videos as stylistic and mechanical elements that I especially enjoyed in Atari 8-bit games, and he joked to me in a private message that I had “influenced some of the design decisions in the game more than [I] could imagine!”
Now, the final result is here. And it’s great. Take a look!
Return of the Fungi is an arcade-style game that unfolds across twenty levels, each with two phases to take on. In the first, Brian the Blob is hurling toadstool spores at Digger Dan, and our hero must drop proximity mines to take them out before they eject their spores. In the second phase, the spores grow into fungus, and Dan must drop time bombs to eliminate the rapidly spreading fungus before it envelops the protective shield around The Great Diamond.
It’s enormously addictive, very well-designed and developed with a huge amount of polish — take note of the exciting and varied animation on the game’s interface, including “pinball-style” scoring that racks up bit by bit rather than all at once, and dramatic transitions between phases and stages. Perhaps most importantly, though, it feels like a true successor to its two prequels — there’s consistency in both the audio-visual aesthetics and the overall sense of mechanical design; it’s almost as if those intervening 35 years never happened.
Hunt has packaged all three Digger Dan games together in a single bundle for anyone to enjoy — whether you’re a longstanding Atari 8-bit fan like me, or a newcomer to this particular part of retro gaming history. And just to make said bundle all the more worth your download — as if a brand new Atari 8-bit game developed in 2021 wasn’t enough already — Hunt has also provided full HTML commentary on the series as a whole, including full instructions as well as a breakdown of how the mechanics work.
In the case of Return of the Fungi, Hunt offers prospective new players a choice: go in with the bare minimum information needed to figure the game out (which is what we would have had back in the day) or learn all about the mechanics and calculations that are going on behind the scenes and make this game what it is. I recommend going in “blind” for your first playthrough or two and seeing what you can figure out — but the in-depth explanation makes for some interesting reading once you have a grasp on what the game is all about!
We’re absolutely delighted here at Retrounite to play host to the first ever release of both Return of the Fungi and the Digger Dan trilogy in its entirety. The archive contains .xex versions of all three games, which can be run on Atari 8-bit emulators or original hardware, plus Simon Hunt’s full documentation, which can be read in your web browser.
Click here to download the Digger Dan Trilogy for yourself — and we’ll see you deep underground!
Need a good Atari 8-bit emulator? Click here to download Altirra.
