| Manufacturer: | Data East |
| Genre: | Platformer |
| Board: | DECO Cassette System |
| Year: | 1982 |
This month, MonkeyPaw Games released their update of BurgerTime for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. It's not bad, but lacks the purity of Data East's original, so I decided I should make it this November's CotM.
The setup for BurgerTime is simple enough: as chef Peter Pepper, you must assemble burgers while avoiding contact with the pursuing food-related enemies, which included frankfurters, fried eggs and pickles. The problem (and therefore the challenge) was that the burgers were enormous, person-sized affairs, with their constitute parts (top bun-half, salad, burger meat and bottom bun-half) spread across different platforms. To put these elements together you had to run across them (don't mention health and safety) to make them fall down to the next tier of the level. The parts could be made to cascade, which was risky, but did save time. For example, if you ran across the top bun-half, it would fall on the salad, which in turn would fall on the meat, which would land on the bottom bun-half. However, you had to walk across each layer completely, otherwise it wouldn't fall. To help you keep up your pace, you start each round with 6 twists of a pepper grinder, which can be used to temporarily stun the enemy food that chased you around the level. Other than that, all you could do to avoid losing a life was to turn tale and climb up or down a ladder to another tier.
As with most arcade games from that period, BurgerTime was fun, simple, irreverent and above all, challenging. Let's take a look at it in action:
As well as the recent console sequel, there were a number of arcade sequels, most notably Super BurgerTime, which added the jump mechanic that has stay with the franchise ever since - for better or worse.
MTW
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