BurgerTime review: the chef who builds lunch by walking on it

A chef runs along platforms and ladders while a hot dog, a pickle and a fried egg chase him. Under his feet are a giant bun, a patty and a leaf of lettuce. Walk across one and it drops a floor. Get everything down onto the plate and you have made a burger. That is the whole thing, and it is wonderful.

Walking is the verb

In BurgerTime you never press a button to build. Peter Pepper walks the full length of an ingredient and it falls to the level below, knocking down whatever was sitting under it. So every route through the maze is also a construction plan. You are not only running away, you are choosing which piece of lunch to finish next.

The enemies make that choice hard. Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle and Mr. Egg wander the ladders, and there are only so many ways out of a corner. You get five pepper shots at the start to stun whatever is right in front of you, and the whole game teaches you that pepper is money.

In BurgerTime the chase and the chore are the same walk.

The trap is the best part

Here is the design idea that makes it great. Drop an ingredient while enemies are standing on it and it falls two extra levels for every enemy caught on it. It scores more and finishes the board faster, but you have to let them get close first. Crushing an enemy under a falling bun is the safe play. Carrying three of them down on a patty is the greedy one, and greedy is where the fun lives.

There are six boards, each with more ingredients and meaner layouts, and then it loops.

The silliest game on the floor

In Japan it was called Hamburger. In North America, Data East USA licensed it for distribution by Bally Midway, and it arrived after a showing at the AMOA trade show in November 1982. Video Games magazine called it the "stupidest, silliest game ever" and meant it as praise, adding that you could not get people off the machines with a crowbar.

What it meant back then

Put a game about burgers in an American pizza parlor or a burger joint and it sells itself. Kids who had never cared about spaceships wandered over because the screen had a pickle on it. It was the cabinet little brothers could understand, and the one parents did not mind because nobody was blowing anything up. A quarter bought you a few boards and a lot of shrieking.

Playing it today

The controls are simple and the timing is strict, which is why it still works. The first board is gentle. By the fourth you are planning drops two moves ahead and hoarding pepper like it is the last dollar in your wallet. It is a puzzle game wearing an apron.