Classic of the Month - BurgerTime

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

What are dip switches?

Dip switches are small switches that can be found on lots of different circuit boards, from computer motherboards to engine management systems in cars to air conditioning systems. They allow engineers to turn on different operating modes by selecting different combinations of switches. These different modes may may be something simple like a diagnostic mode to something that fundamentally changing how the machine works.

They can also be found in the system boards of arcade machines. Dip switches on arcade machines allow arcade operators to things like how many credits are required to play or turning sounds on and off in attract mode. They often even allowed operators to change the gameplay, with options for how many lives players start with, when to award bonus lives and even difficulty.

Here's a pic of dip switch banks 6K and 6J on a Galaga system board, highlighted by a red border:

As you can see, they are pretty small -- too small to change with your finger tip, so people usually use a small flat screw driver or even a pen, if they're feeling lazy.

If you play games on MAME, go into the options and you will usually find dip switch settings you can change in there too.

MTW

Attack of the Clones

Years before I ever played games like Asteroids, Pac-Man or Defender in the arcade I played a number of very (very) similar games on my older brother's BBC Micro B. Only, they weren't called Asteroids, Pac-Man or Defender, they were called Meteors, Snapper and Planetoid and they were some of the many clones created by companies like Acornsoft, Micro Power and Superior Software. I never questioned the similarities at the time, but thinking about it now, the BBC B had rather a lot of blatant rip o— ahem, I mean clo— err, I meant homages to classic arcade games. And although I cannot speak for many other computers and consoles of that era, I'm pretty sure systems like the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum had their fair share of clones too.

Here are a few of the BBC B games I can remember — see if you can work out what arcade games they were based on:

 

 

 

I think you'll agree, all rather blatant and I doubt, in today's more copyright conscious society, Acornsoft, Micro Power or Superior Software could have got away with it. Still, as my memory serves, they were generally pretty good clones.

For more classic BBC B games check out http://www.bbcmicrogames.com

MTW