BurgerTime

Name: BurgerTime
Year: 1987
Publisher: Data East
Developer: Data East
Genre: Arcade
Hours Played: 3
Beaten: N/A

BurgerTime is a one-screen platformer game; a genre that was all the rage in the arcades between 1980 (the release of Donkey Kong) and 1985 (the release of Super Mario Bros).  Released in arcades in 1982, it was ported to the NES in 1987, after side-scrolling platformers had already established themselves as the dominate genre on the system.

The idea of BurgerTime is that you're a chef, and your climbing up and down ladders, trying to knock down good ingredients (buns, lettuce, burger patties) into piles of delicious hamburgers, all while avoiding evil ingredients (eggs, sausage, and pickles).  Using pepper will stun the evil ingredients for a limited time, and you can defeat them if you knock down good ingredients while they're standing under it.  As the levels progress, things get faster (in true arcade tradition) and the ladder layouts change, but mostly it's just the same thing over and over again.

[Side note: I can understand why the eggs and sausage want to kill you, since they're breakfast food and theoretically don't go on burgers (but taste so good when they do!), but the pickles in particular bother me.  Why are they an enemy instead of an ingredient like the lettuce?  I don't get it.]

Strong feelings about food hierarchy aside, I just don't get this game.  I've spent over three hours playing it, and I was never able to get into that "arcade game rhythm" of games like Pac-Man or Bubble Bobble.  The controls are frustrating, the theme is just weird, the enemies enter the play field from the sides of the screen without warning, you have limited pepper, and the enemies always move at exactly the same speed you do, except you get hung up switching from ladders to platforms and they don't.  Maybe the arcade version plays better, I don't know, but I can think of a whole lot of NES games I'd rather be playing then this one.

Graphics & Animation: 1 (Bad)
I'll say this for it: at least I can tell what everything is suppose to be... those are burger patties, right?  They've got a lot of green coloring to them... are they veggie burgers? I'm gonna say they're veggie burgers.

Music & Sound: 0 (Awful)
The ten second never-ending music loop will make you want to stab out your own ears just to end the suffering.  It doesn't change from level to level, either.

Controls & Level Design: 0 (Awful)
Maybe the arcade version controls a lot better, I dunno; I never played it.  But in this version, transitioning from ladder to platform (and vise versa) is tricky.  You know how in Mega Man, if your character is positioned near the ladder and you hit up, the game will automatically center him on the ladder?  No such luck here.  Worse, if you're even a pixel up or down from the platform, you can't get off the ladder until you adjust;  it doesn't make it easy when you've got murderous sausage and eggs on your tail.

Story & Presentation: 0 (Awful)
I have no idea what's going on here.  You're a chef who makes hamburgers by walking on food, evil ingredients try to kill you but are allergic to pepper, the whole thing is a mess.  If you're desperate for a good food-themed game on the NES, try Restaurant Panic; it's actually pretty fun.

Length & Replayability: 0 (Awful)
Trying to make it through every screen of this game so I can finish the review has been torture.  Every level is pretty much the same, so you don't even have curiosity to push you forward.

Total: 1 (Awful)