Dig Dug Island

The head designer, Haruki Negi, wanted the game to appeal to a more casual audience, specifically children and newcomers to the Dig Dug franchise.For the multiplayer portion, Mori created a "gondola system", which stripped host-controlled parties in favor of pre-made servers for players to join; the team added this to help encourage teamwork with other users.[1] Players could create their own avatars or even select ones based on characters from other Namco video games, including Mappy,[2] The Tower of Druaga,[2] Valkyrie no Densetsu[3] and Wonder Momo.[2] Haruki Negi was assigned as the project's designer,[2] who wanted the game to appeal to a more casual audience, namely children and newcomers to the Dig Dug franchise, being made to be easily accessible and simplistic in nature.[10] In 2009, VerX began to permanently close Dig Dug Island and the sister game Tancle, itself based on Namco Bandai's Tank Battalion franchise.