In the "golden days" of the arcades, when we all plunked quarter after quarter into such games such as Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Dig Dug, one of the unsung heroes of the day for many of us was Mr. Do!
He didn't seem much - just a clown in a maze filled with cherries...but armed with a mighty weapon...the POWER BALL! He would roam about each maze, oddly enough with paths in the shape of the number of the level we were on which would cycle around every 10 screens, changing color with faster monsters. You also had the opportunity to face off against the "EXTRA" monsters - each one holding one letter. They would either come out when you claimed the fruit at the middle of the screen once all the regular monsters left the lair (preceded by 3 gobble-ghosts), or sometimes they would come out on their own. Once you got all 5, then you got, of course, a free life. The real jewel - literally - was when an apple would break open, and you sometimes got a diamond! Snag that...and it's free game city! They were very rare though, and once you heard that tinkling sound, your adrenaline raced to see if you could snag that elusive prize!
Universal released this game in 1982, early on in the arcade days, back when imagination was the weapon of choice, and what lured people to their games in droves of quarter-happy-plunking-adolescence.
But....what happens when people get tired of roaming around garden-esque fields of cherries flinging balls at monsters? You build a CASTLE!
Mr. Do's Castle - released just ONE year later after the original came up with a novel idea - give the man a bigger hammer! Gone are the days of just the flinging power ball, boyo....now we have our WHACK-EM BOPPER! You cleared levels either by bonking all the cherry blocks or by defeating all the bad guys - either by bonking them directly with your bopper, or by dropping blocks on them. There were three keys in each level as well, that when you bonked all three, a magic door at the top would open, and then once you claimed the power-up above, the monsters would turn into the "EXTRA" monsters, which you could bonk with your hammer - each one raising a flag up top once hit, but if you dawdled too long, they would revert to their monster badness....dawdle too long after that, and they morphed into bad, blue unicorns, and they would just get faster and faster until you got them....or they....got you!
Get past the first level, and you went on to different castles, with different layouts, ladders, and positions of key blocks, so it was quite the challenge to keep going until they bad guys got the best of you in the end.
Boy...after all that castle-thumping, what do you do next? Something relaxing of course....like a roller coaster!
Yep, Universal does it AGAIN, just one year later after Do's Castle, and if you think Mr. Do is gonna get any rest at this roller coaster park, you can just think again! It's one challenge after another as THIS time, you have to traverse roller coaster tracks, avoiding coaster cars and other obstacles in order to reach the goal at the end, which has a letter for "extra" and a prize, or two "extra" letters. There are ladders along the way on which you can gather cherries (doesn't this guy eat ANY other fruit?) and more importantly, DODGE CARS! You can get smacked by huge metal balls, bopped by a floating pirate ship, or any assortment of obstacles in your way (mainly the cars though). Survive one round of this lunacy, and it's on to the next track, and more cars to avoid....and more goodies to grab! Oh yeah....you also have a time limit as well before your bonus on each round runs out - just one more thing Universal thrown in to make your life interesting.
As if that weren't enough, Mr. Do got tired of living in a 2-dimensional world, so he broke out into the third!
Do! Run Run is basically along the same lines as the original game, BUT when you round up a square of cherries, that part of the screen changes color and the prizes change too. Also, you can run under logs, kick out the support, and have the log roll over your enemies, which oft times works even better than the old apples did since they're BIGGER and can flatten more enemies! Some people didn't get the effect of this game, and it didn't last long due to it's quite esoteric gameplay mechanics. It definitely was a cute game though!
Mr. Do! was released for many home systems too, such as the Atari (yes, there were those of us desperate enough for our Do-Fix that we even got THIS version! OK...it didn't suck quite that bad, but compared to the arcade, we just had to hold our breath and wait for systems to get more advanced).
and of course, the Super Nintendo (which really preserved the original QUITE nicely!).......
but the version for the Neo-Geo home system REALLY stood out!
Neo Mr. Do re-introduced us to the concept of the orginal game, but with different backgrounds, and different weapons of choice depending on the level. It had all the elements of the original, from the "extra" dudes to the cherries (obviously this guy has a VERY strict fruit diet), to the original "power ball". 14 years after the original, it proved that you can bring heroes from the past to the (then) present, freshen them up, and let them have fun all over again.
In today's world where good games are far and few between, you might think about going back to this golden-age classic and relive those quarter-munching days of yesteryear all over again.
Now...where did I put that box of cherries? :-)