Ha hey, a Mr. Driller game. If you’ve played Mr. Driller before, you know what’s up: drill multi-colored blocks in order to go further down, and when you reach the end you win. Whee. Mr. Driller Ace’s mission-based “Pacteria” Mode is a little different in that there’s no timer. Your air supply doesn’t slowly tick away; it only depletes when you drill through a block. Or when you get hit; then you lose a LOT of air. So, if you just drill down mindlessly like in the original game, you’re going to die very quickly and get frustrated easily. So the point is to go about it slowly, and to think about what you do next and making use of powerups to survive. If thinking games make you start grunting and screaming and throwing things, this is not your game.

Items you collect in the game can be used to feed and evolve a Tamagotchi-like creature in a minigame.

The game also features a standard timed Mission Driller Mode with more characters and features than those found in Mr. Driller 2, as well as a competitive racing mode.

The readme says this patch is 15% complete, which is not much. Especially if you play the game. Basically, only the in-game menus are done, and none of the text, or main menus, or creature-raising menus or whatever else.

Oh, and the readme says you need the ROM with the crappy Eurasia intro on it, but the original ROM image will work fine as well.

• 0555 - Mr. Driller Ace - Strange Bacteria (J)(Eurasia).gba
• CRC32: 69F56BE2
• MD5: 7F41AD3F743AC87A4B025A9616CC7EE0
• SHA-1: 4DC43F5DCB7163959D8E68F7CCB3882857E4B4A5
• SHA-256: 9AA9FB1D66CF5DF96AAA500894D1DD2EAAE3A3B9AD064A2179F6E4313E3CC247