Although now far better known as an arcade standby, the pastime of whacking Diglett over the head has a much longer history. Diglett are a remarkably quick pokemon, prone to surfacing their heads and lowering them at an extremely fast rate. Because of this, children since ancient times have used long sticks to hit them as they surface as a test of their reflexes, competing among one another to see who could hit the most in a set timeframe, typically playing until all the Diglett were knocked out. The Arena Trap ability possessed by this pokemon made the (often terrified or injured) Diglett unwittingly force them to stay until one of them was knocked out. Soon after their invention, pokeballs were added to the ends of the mallets, and the whack-a-Diglett game became a popular if dangerous method for young people near Diglett Cave to catch themselves a starting pokemon; the Diglett often whacked back.
As the world entered a less harsh age, the game began to die out. Pokeballs attached to mallets continued to be a common way of catching wild Diglett, but the test of reflexes against a whole horde was virtually extinct. The introduction of foam and rubber to Kanto saw a brief revival of the game's fortunes, but the modern era also saw a population decline in the area as people moved from the outskirts of the cave to Viridian and Vermillion cities, along with a greater amount of options for entertainment..
Indeed, the Diglett game had almost died out entirely again, until an enterprising old inventor nostalgic for a lost childhood game turned it into an arcade hit as popular as pokemon pinball. Today, Diglett again must fear being whacked, as legions of arcade-goers have ventured to their cave to try out the real thing.