BurgerTime

BurgerTime (バーガータイム, Bāgātaimu) is a 1982 arcade game created by Data East initially for its DECO Cassette System. The player is chef Peter Pepper, who must walk over hamburger ingredients located across a maze of platforms while avoiding pursuing characters. The game's original Japanese title, Hamburger (ハンバーガー), was changed to BurgerTime before its introduction to the United States.

In the United States, Data East USA licensed BurgerTime for distribution by Bally Midway as a standard dedicated arcade game. Data East also released its own version of BurgerTime in the US through the DECO Cassette System. The Data East and Midway versions are distinguished by the manufacturer's name on the title screen and by the marquee and cabinet artworks, as the game itself is identical.

When Data East went bankrupt in 2003, G-Mode bought most of Data East's intellectual properties, including BurgerTime, BurgerTime Deluxe, Super BurgerTime, and Peter Pepper's Ice Cream Factory.^[1]

Gameplay

Screenshot of Data East's arcade version of BurgerTime.

The object of the game is to complete a number of hamburgers while avoiding enemy foods.

When main protagonist, chef Peter Pepper, the player's character, walks the length of an ingredient (bun, meat patty, tomato, etc.), it falls one level. If it lands atop another ingredient, the latter in turn falls one level. A burger is completed when all vertically aligned ingredients have been dropped out of the maze and onto a waiting plate. Once all burgers are completed, the game level is finished.

While making burgers, the player must avoid the antagonists, three types of enemies: Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle, and Mr. Egg. Enemies can be dodged, stunned, crushed with a falling ingredient, or dropped by luring them onto an ingredient and then causing it to fall. In this last case, the piece will fall two extra levels for every enemy caught on it. Enemies that have been crushed or dropped return to the maze after a few seconds. Dropped enemies award larger point values than crushed ones; therefore, to obtain a high score, the player must attract more than one enemy onto an ingredient just before dropping it.

Peter Pepper has pepper shots to shake on nearby enemies to stun and render them harmless for a few seconds. Extra shots are obtained by collecting bonus foods, such as coffee, an ice cream cone, or French fries, which appear in the center of the maze when a certain number of ingredients have dropped.

There are six screens of increasing difficulty, with more burgers and enemies, burgers that have more parts, and/or layouts that make it easier for Peter Pepper to be cornered and harder for him to reach the ingredients. Completing all six screens takes the player back to the first one.

Scoring

• Every ingredient: 50 points.
• Crushing: Mr. Hot Dog (100), Mr. Pickle (200), Mr. Egg (300 points).
• Dropping foes: 500 (one), 1,000 (two), 2,000 (three), 4,000 (four), 8,000 (five), 16,000 points (six).
• Ice cream cones: 500; Coffee mugs: 1,000; French fries: 1,500 points. All of these items give an extra pepper shot.

Players earn extra lives per 10,000 or 20,000 points scored. None thereafter upon scoring 1,000,000 points.

Sequels

Flyer for Super BurgerTime

An arcade spin-off, Peter Pepper's Ice Cream Factory (1984) and an arcade sequel, Super BurgerTime (スーパーバーガータイム) (1990), were not widely released. Super BurgerTime stars Peter Pepper Jr. and allows two players to play at once. It is fairly true to the original, but with many added features and greatly improved graphics.

A console-only sequel, Diner, was created after the 1984 purchase of Intellivision from Mattel by INTV Corp. It was programmed by Ray Kaestner, the programmer of the Intellivision version of BurgerTime. In Diner, Peter Pepper must kick balls of food so that they roll off platforms and down ramps to land on a large plate at the bottom of the screen, while avoiding or crushing enemy food items that are trying to stop him.

BurgerTime Deluxe was released for the Game Boy in 1991.^[2]

Namco released BurgerTime Delight for mobile devices in 2007. It includes "new graphics, characters and power-ups".^[3] There are six "arcade levels" and eight enhanced mode levels with perils of falling ice and rising fire from the grill. Besides the pepper of the classic game, there is now a salt shaker, that when collected stuns all enemies on the screen.

A 3D update, BurgerTime World Tour, was released in 2011 for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, and in 2012 for WiiWare.^[4] It was delisted from Xbox Live Arcade on April 30, 2014.^[5]

Ports

The Intellivision port was reportedly Mattel's most-popular game for the console.^[6] It was ported to several other home computers and consoles: Apple II, Atari 2600, BBC Micro, ColecoVision, MS-DOS, Mattel Aquarius, MSX, NES, and TI-99/4A.

BurgerTime has been included in various retrogaming packages and platforms, including Midway Arcade Greatest Hits Volume 2 for the PlayStation and the Wii Virtual Console.

Legacy

There are numerous clones for home systems: Mr. Wimpy, Burger Chase, Burger Time (Interceptor Micros), BurgerSpace, Chip Factory, Burger Boy!,^[7] Basic Burger^[8] Barmy Burgers,^[9] Burger Builder,^[10] and Lunchtime.^[11]

Peter Pepper appeared in the movies Wreck-It Ralph and Pixels.

Mr. Egg did a brief appearance in the episode of the animated series Futurama "Anthology of Interest II".

Reception

BurgerTime received a Certificate of Merit in the category of "1984 Videogame of the Year (Less than 16K ROM)" at the 5th annual Arkie Awards.^[12]:40 The Deseret News called BurgerTime "one of the real surprises of 1983 for the Intellivision", and gave the ColecoVision version three and one half stars.^[6]

Scores

In 1984, Billy Mitchell achieved a record score of 7,881,050. It was beaten on September 5, 2005 by Bryan L. Wagner of Turbotville, Pennsylvania with a score of 8,601,300 and improved to exactly 9,000,000 on June 2, 2006^[13][14] According to Twin Galaxies, he improved it further to 11,512,500 points on September 19, 2008 at the Challenge Arcade in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania.^[15] The MAME world record was verified by Twin Galaxies on December 2, 2016 as 7,837,750 by Roger Edwin Blair III of Mountain City, Tennessee.^[16]

References

External links

• BurgerTime at the Killer List of Videogames
• BurgerTime video capture
• The MS-DOS version of BurgerTime can be played for free in the browser at the Internet Archive