Taking things case by case (by case)

TIME: For the amount of time it takes

To Beat: Solve 80 Cases
Played: 3/18/20 – 4/5/20
Difficulty: 3/10
My Difficulty: 3/10
My Video: Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? Longplay (Part 1) (Part 2)

Much like the titular character, I never really got close to Carmen Sandiego.  In grade school, I remember our computer lab consisted of all Apple II’s plus a lone Macintosh computer.  During computer time one student a day got to do activities on the Mac and I do remember that there was a Carmen Sandiego game as an option.  I don’t even remember what I did when my turn came up, and even if I did play Carmen Sandiego, I don’t recall anything about it.  The closest I got to Carmen was occasionally watching Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego on PBS, listening to Rockapella serenade the audience and seeing if the winner could mark off all the countries on the map.  I know there were plenty of educational games bearing her name, but I didn’t seek that stuff out on my own and my parents didn’t force educational games on me.  Much like the main character once more, time has eventually caught up to me and now I am finally playing a Carmen Sandiego game to catch her for myself.

Carmen Sandiego is the lead character in a set of educational video games.  Common to all games, the player’s task is to look for clues and use knowledge to follow her and her henchmen around the world, eventually leading to her capture.  The series was created by Broderbund and began in 1985 with Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?  Broderbund continued to make Carmen Sandiego games until 1998 when the company was acquired by The Learning Company, who have continued to make games in the series to the present day.  Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? is the 5th game in the series.  It was first released on Apple II in August 1989, then was ported to various PCs, the NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis.  The NES version was released in October 1991 in North America only.  This port was developed by Distinctive Software and published by Konami.

In Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, you play the role of a fresh recruit to the Acme Detective Agency.  Carmen Sandiego and her team of V.I.L.E. henchmen have gotten a hold of a time machine and have been using it to heist various well-known treasures across history.  Fortunately, the agency has access to a portable time travel device called the Chronoskimmer 325i and has assigned it to you so that you can chase Carmen and her gang across time.  There are time restrictions to the device so you can only use it for a short time.  You will need to gather clues to follow the bad guys around and hopefully arrest them before time expires.  As you are making a career out of this, you will need to solve 80 cases before you can retire.  Buckle in, this is gonna take a while!

Fresh-faced and ready to go!

The first thing you would notice upon buying this game brand new at retail was that it came in an oversized box.  This is because the game comes with a paperback desk encyclopedia.  Coming in at 1374 pages, it is a comprehensive encyclopedia.  In this game you will gather clues that you reference in the encyclopedia to find out when and where one of the criminals has run off.  I made sure to buy a complete copy of the game with encyclopedia so that I could play the game as it was intended.

At the start of the game, you have just arrived at headquarters.  Your view is from the inside of an elevator at the lobby level.  Use the hand cursor to select an elevator button to move between floors.  In the basement, you can view the game’s credits.  The third floor is the lab where you can peek in on a science experiment.  You can grab a cup of coffee (hopefully) on the fourth floor lounge.  These things are just for fun.  The real destination is the personnel department on the second floor.  Here you enter in your name up to eight characters, then a password if you want to continue from a previous game.  Passwords are seven alphabet characters long.  It seems from my list of passwords that not all letters are used even though you can select any of them.  If either starting a new game or continuing, you will power up the Chronoskimmer and get to searching!

All of your time playing will be spent on one screen.  At the top are a couple of boxes that display which country and year you are currently located.  The left side box is your graphical display while the right side box is for text.  In the center columns are buttons to select options as displayed in either window at times.  The bottom of the screen shows the time remaining in hours as well as your main menu options: Travel, Search, Data, and Abort.  You navigate this screen via a simple hand cursor.  Simply use the D-pad to move across each button and press either A or B to press the button.

This is a learning game, so there’s plenty of historical facts.

The first thing you will want to do in your investigation is look for clues.  You can do that with the options within the Search menu.  Select Search and then choose from either Witness, Informant, or Scanner.  Choosing Witness and Informant does pretty much the same thing.  You will question someone at your location, and they will tell you something they heard about where the criminal is going next.  You take that piece of information to the encyclopedia to figure out the country and rough time period that it relates to.  Sometimes the witness or informant will also give you an additional piece of information related to the description of the criminal.  These extra clues are essential for determining exactly who you are pursuing for this case.  More on that later.  The Scanner lets you sweep the environment for objects the crook may have dropped, which can also be referenced in the encyclopedia.  Sometimes you can do additional scans on the object you found to get a more detailed hint.  Every time you ask a witness or informant, or do a scan or follow up scan, it costs some hours off the clock.

The Data menu is helpful for learning more about the different criminals you are chasing as well as logging any descriptions you may have uncovered during your search of the scene.  In the submenu you can pick from either Evidence or Dossiers.  The Evidence menu lets you log the criminal description clues.  There are five categories of evidence: Sex, Hair Color, Eye Color, Favorite Artist, and Favorite Author.  Some of the descriptions you’ll uncover are very straightforward, while others may require some encyclopedia research.  Log whatever you find, then when you have enough clues you can use the Compute function.  This lets you know how many criminals fit the description you have gathered so far.  Once you narrow it down to one criminal, you will receive a warrant for their arrest.  The Dossiers submenu lets you browse the known criminals and read some basic information about each one from which you can glean some of his or her attributes.
 
When your search turns up enough information to know where your criminal went, now you must to travel through time to catch up with them.  The travel menu pulls up a list of four countries along with a time period displayed on a graph.  The time periods you can travel to are 400-1299, 1300-1699, 1700-1899, and 1900-present.  Sometimes you get the same country multiple times in the list in different time periods, and occasionally there are only three selections in the list instead of four.  When you are confident, click your selection and travel through time.  At your next location, if you have tracked the criminal successfully, once you search for help you will see a cutscene displaying V.I.L.E. Henchman Detected.  Then you look for more clues and keep following leads.  If you miss and travel to the wrong location, the search comes up empty and you will have to backtrack in time to get set on the correct course, wasting your precious hours.

When you see More, you’ll get information about your suspect.

With enough investigation, you will have tracked the criminal through multiple locations and have gathered enough descriptive evidence to have collected a warrant for their arrest.  Now it is time to make your capture.  At your final destination, you simply need to search the location to find them.  There are special cutscenes that play to indicate you are at the final location and time period for this case.  You just need to attempt either two or all three of the search options before you finally see them.  Then you catch the criminal via a cutscene, reveal his or her identity, and see if your warrant matches.  If so, then congratulations, that case is completed!

The game is a very long grind with the 80 cases required to beat it.  There are some milestones along the journey that slightly help to break up the monotony.  As you complete more cases, you advance job titles.  You begin as a Time Cadet, but at certain numbers of cases completed, you will get a promotion to such job titles as Time Investigator and Time Detective, among others.  You get special text upon completing the required case to show your promotion.  Also, at one point during your journey, you will finally catch up to Carmen Sandiego.  Now you would think that this would complete the game, but it only serves as your signature achievement.  You still need to get to the full 80 cases completed to officially retire from the force.

This was my first time playing Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?  As an educational game in a popular series, it seems to have sold well enough.  I wouldn’t say it’s a common title, maybe slightly uncommon, but not too hard to track down.  Finding the game in the big box with the encyclopedia is not as easy to find, but even then it’s not terribly expensive.  Expect to pay around $10 for a loose cart and $35-$40 for the complete set.  I had the loose cart from a lot purchase, and I bought my CIB for around $30 about 3-4 years ago.

Enter in enough evidence to find who your suspect is.

The first thing I needed to do was some research on my potential criminals.  I figured out right away that the criminals themselves have pre-defined characteristics and tastes, so that part is not randomized.  Then, I set out to create a table of names along with their hair and eye color and all that.  There are 16 criminals in the game and four types of each of the five attributes.  It is set up so that exactly four criminals have each specific attribute, such as red hair or Kipling as their favorite author.  Reading through the dossiers, I figured out two or three attributes of each person, and then from there I was able to deduce almost all the rest.  That’s when I figured out that I could have done all this legwork much easier.  If you enter in any arrangement of evidence, even with some left blank, and do the Compute function, then the game lists out every criminal matching that description.  You can build a table more quickly that way, but oh well, my work was already done.

The next step was to do some research on the list of favorite authors and artists.  This part was really straightforward.  I simply looked up each person in the encyclopedia and jotted down notes of every significant mention in the entry.  Specific events, acknowledgements, or works of art included in the encyclopedia were often mentioned in a specific clue in the game, which was huge for setting up the evidence.  It was much easier to use a cheat sheet than to keep referring to the encyclopedia entries every single time.

Even with the best laid plans, there were still clues in the game that I could not find any reference at all in the encyclopedia.  This was true with pieces of evidence as well as location clues for when you time travel.  Other clues could be ambiguous, such as in cases were events or lifespans occurred across two time periods.  In those instances, I kept another sheet of paper keeping track of those clues along the solutions after I deduced them through gathering additional information.  I had documented maybe 15-20 pieces of information like this, which really isn’t that many considering the scope of the game.  Some less obvious clues are just part of the experience.

Arrest made! Just 79 to go…

It bears repeating that this is such a long game to complete.  The first few cases you’ll solve are pretty short with only 5 stops or so.  I actually find these harder than in the later game because you have fewer opportunities to get the clues needed to get the arrest warrant.  The amount of time you have to complete each case is randomized but generally scales up to the size of the case as you go up in rank.  The shorter cases require more questioning of people which cuts into the amount of time you need to solve, track, and arrest.  The animations throughout the game also add a bunch of filler time to the game experience as they are both slow and plentiful.  I moved as quickly as I could once I started to get the hang of it.  I also started to memorize some of the clues which saved a bunch of empty research time.  Each case took me roughly 8-10 minutes each to solve, even as they got larger later in the game due to optimization of research.  The full playthrough lasted a little over 12 hours, in addition to roughly an hour or so of research and early, unrecorded attempts.  In the larger scheme this isn’t a super long game, but boy does it feel longer than that.

There’s one minor quirk of gameplay that I noticed happen a few times.  Normally when you time travel to the wrong location, the criminal will never have been there so you get no hints and you know you have to try and go back. However, it is possible to go to the wrong location in the sequence but be at one of the places you have already hit on your search.  When this happens, you will still see the V.I.L.E. Henchman detected scene which leads you to believe you are on the right track, when in fact you have probably messed yourself up from completing the entire case.  I noticed one time I kept having the same clue come up, while another time I had no idea I was off the path until time ran out.  It all depends on which location in the sequence that you backtrack to.  This is a completely sensible thing to happen and I totally get it.  I was understandably frustrated to have that happen over the course of such a long game.

Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? does exactly what it sets out to do.  It is a solid educational title with tons of historical information inside and plenty to learn about.  The graphics are well drawn and there are so many different scenes and animations from all the different time periods and locations.  There is very little music in the game, which in one way is a shame since there is so much silent gameplay and, in another way, maybe a blessing in disguise if the music were to be bad.  The controls work fine as they don’t need to be complicated in this game.  The gameplay is good enough for what it is, however the decision to make the game so long to reach the end is what drags it down.  The game is already repetitive by nature and 80 cases is such a weird, arbitrary number to choose.  You’ll have to time travel hundreds of times just to see the basic ending screens.  It is hardly worth it, but at least I’ve learned some things along the way.

#153 – Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?

#153 – Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?

Punch, kick, and flip your way through this challenging action game.

The title logo palette changes, I think this color looks best.

To Beat: Reach the ending
To Complete: Reach the ending without warping
What I Did: Completed the game
Played: 5/19/18 – 5/26/18
Difficulty: 9/10
My Difficulty: 9/10
My Video: Kung-Fu Heroes Longplay

As you may know, before I started Take On The NES Library, I generated a randomized list of games and I am clearing games in that order. Once that list was set, I have completely ignored it aside from revealing only the next game in the list as I finish new games. I love the mystery of it all and I’m glad I’m doing it this way. Still, there are a few games that I remember where they fall on that list. For no particular reason, I remembered that Kung-Fu Heroes appeared somewhere in the 80s. Well, here we are! Perhaps this game stuck out to me because I knew that it was a sneaky difficult game. Let’s jump in and see what I was up against.

Kung-Fu Heroes began as an arcade title named Chinese Hero. It was developed by Nihon Game and published by Taiyo System in Japan and Kitcorp in North America. It released in 1984. A Famicom port of the game released in 1986 under the name Super Chinese. That version was published by Namco under the Namcot label. The NES version wouldn’t come out until March 1989. The NES version was also developed by Nihon Game, but by then they had renamed the company to Culture Brain. They also published the game on NES. Kung-Fu Heroes is the first game in the Super Chinese series. There were three Famicom games in the series. Super Chinese 2 would release on the NES as Little Ninja Brothers, and Super Chinese 3 is exclusive to the Famicom.

Kung-Fu Heroes is a top-down action game. You’ve heard this kind of story before. Monsters come and capture Princess Min-Min while also taking away ten treasures. You control either Jacky or Lee to battle the monsters and restore peace. (I wonder where their names came from?) Kung-Fu Heroes has a two-player mode with simultaneous gameplay if you want to tackle the game with a friend. The game takes places over eight castles with four areas each. Your task is to defeat enough monsters in each area so that the door opens to the next area. Once you complete all 32 areas, you save the princess and beat the game.

A nice courtyard becomes a battleground.

The controls to this game are more complicated than they first appear. You walk with the D-pad, moving in the four cardinal directions. Press A to punch. You reach forward by stepping quickly ahead and back when you punch and enemies break apart completely when you defeat them. You can perform the moon sault kick by pressing the B button. This also acts as a jump button. Hold down a direction and press B to jump kick into the air. You can defeat some enemies while airborne, and others you can defeat when you land on top of them with the kick. If you press B while standing still, you will perform a special move called the miracle kick. During the miracle kick, you move really fast and can jump much further than with the moon sault kick. There are a few other things you can do under special circumstances that I’ll cover later.

It’s a little unclear what you have to do in this game when you first start playing the game, so I’ll clear that up first. All the action takes place on a single screen. Enemies will appear one at a time periodically from the sides of the screen. There will be no more than four enemies on the screen at one time. After defeating twelve enemies, the door at the top of the screen will open, accompanied by a loud beeping noise. Unfortunately, there is no indicator for how far you have progressed within a level. Sometimes you don’t need to defeat all twelve enemies. Either way, as soon as the door opens the enemies speed up significantly. You can continue to beat them up if you want. To end the level, walk through the open door.

The top of the screen contains most of the information you need during game play. The first row has a bunch of icons and counters. The first one is of a little face that displays how many lives you have remaining. The next one is a letter K which indicates how many miracle kicks you can use. The second player also has these indicators on the right side of the screen. There are three more counters in the middle that are shared between both players. E indicates the number of E-balls you have, the fist icon indicates your punching power, and the money bag displays how much money you have. The second row on the menu bar contains the score for each player. In the middle of the row is a space reserved for any permanent treasures you acquire.

Punch to collect treasures, for nothing is fist-safe.

As you can see, there are a lot of items and abilities in this game. Most of them are acquired through collecting items within each area. Many levels will contain several rocks or blocks. You can punch these blocks to reveal an item that emerges from the block as a bubble. Then punch the item to collect it. The most common item you will see is a treasure box. This will hold one of many different items or upgrades that may not be immediately apparent. It may upgrade your punching power one level, which caps out at three, and you need certain power levels to defeat certain enemies. It may give you five miracle kicks. It might give you a money bag, which you can hold up to six. It might also contain one of the ten treasures. A new treasure will appear blinking at the top of the screen when you get a new one.

Another item you can find is a key. Collecting this opens up a staircase on the block where the key came from. It will close up after some time, but you can enter the stairs before then to go to one of two areas. The more common area is the bonus room. This is a timed room that generates items for you to collect. Red apples just give you points. The E balls are better in that collecting five of them gives you an extra life. This is also what E balls do in the main levels, however collecting them in the bonus area is separate from collecting them during levels. Also, in the bonus areas are a stream of bullets that you should dodge. Dying in the bonus area just ends it early without losing a life. Besides the bonus room, stairs may also lead to a warp room. In this room there are two holes and you can jump in the one you want to advance either a few levels or several levels ahead.

Some levels contain a gun ball item. This is a ball with the letter G on it. When you collect it, you can fire gun balls when you punch for a short time. Firing horizontally causes the gun balls to bounce on the ground as they move ahead. Firing vertically throws them in a straight line very quickly. There are a few upsides to the gun ball. You can use this to kill enemies that usually require more difficult techniques to defeat. Enemies will run away from you while the gun ball is active, and they are unable to shoot projectiles of their own. A few enemies take several gun balls to defeat, so fighting them may not always be worth it.

Bonus rooms are full of items and bullets.

The final items you can collect are question balls and 1ups. Blocks that do not hold items any more, or blocks that don’t hold items at all, can still be interacted with in a couple of ways. Some blocks go flying when you punch them. You can shove the blocks into other enemies and defeat them for more points than with standard attacks. Otherwise, you can keep punching an empty, stationary block to eventually generate a question ball. This will either contain a money bag or an X ball. The X ball resets your money bag count to zero. These blocks are the easiest ways to collect money bags but it is risky. 1ups are uncommon items that tend to appear on empty spaces and you reveal them by punching the air. Makes sure to take note of these special locations if you happen to find one. Finally, the last thing you can find in the levels is another bonus area called Break Time. This takes you to a separate screen where you gain half a million points and can take a free 30-second break if you desire. You can’t control your character or do anything aside from leave early.

Money bags are used to trigger two special items. Simply collecting five money bags generates an E ball somewhere on screen, and remember, five E balls equals an extra life. If you have six money bags, you can redeem them for a P ball. Press A and B together while standing still to make the P ball appear. Be patient because the controls for this are very rigid and I think you have to press both A and B together on the exact same frame to get the P ball to appear. Collect the P ball to turn invincible to enemies for a little while. Enemies turn blue and will run away from you. You can defeat them by simply running into them. It’s a great way to help when clearing difficult rooms.

The ten treasures you find throughout the game all have various effects. Most of them boil down to making it easier either to defeat or to avoid certain enemies. A couple of them reveal hidden dangers in later levels. If you mysteriously die in some of the later levels, you might be missing a treasure that could help. One treasure is a sword. You unsheathe the sword by pressing both A and B at the same time while you are walking, and you put it away the same way. The trigger is similar to the P ball and it’s important to remember the difference so that you don’t accidentally reveal the P ball when you don’t need it. Our hero will hold the sword out while it is in use. There are a couple of enemies that are only vulnerable to the sword.

Uni-Gon is the closest thing to a boss in the game.

There is a wide variety of enemies in this game. Most of them have different attacks, too. The standard commando enemies can punch and kick just like you. There are spear men and gun men. There’s a coffin enemy that will hold you inside of him briefly. A couple enemies fire medusa beams that freeze you for a bit and leave you vulnerable. One enemy just pushes you around. There are two large enemies that you need to watch out for. Uni-Gon is a huge, mummy-like monster that pursues you alone. All other enemies leave when he shows up. He can also breath fire. You can defeat him by punching him five times, but it is extremely risky. I’ve only done it once and usually I just avoid him until he goes away. If you can defeat him, he will leave an E ball behind. The other large enemy is a dragon. He is only vulnerable to the sword and you also have to hit him five times.

There are other features to some levels. One useful feature is the quick passage. These are doors on the left and right edges of the screen and most levels have them. If you walk through the door you will wrap around to the other side of the screen. Some levels have two pairs of quick passage doors. These are most helpful in evading Uni-Gon, but enemies can use them too so that’s another thing to keep in mind. Some levels have wells in them. These are just like the holes you enter in the warp room, only these kill you if you fall in. Some levels have fireballs streaming out of these wells. They are deadly to the touch, even if you are jumping in the air or are invincible with the P ball. Stay away. Some levels have pools of water or lava, and those kill you too. Finally, a few of the later levels have moving or disappearing blocks within the water or lava. If you can get on top of those blocks for just a brief time you will earn a bunch of points as well as some E balls.

You start the game with five lives. You can earn up to nine through the various methods already described. It’s a little frustrating to get good enough at the game to go beyond nine lives only for them not to count. There are no continues to the game either. There is a continue code I found by holding A and pressing Start at the title screen. It will take you back to the first area of the castle you were on. However, it is not listed in the manual so it is off-limits for me. The only nice thing Kung-Fu Heroes does for you is that you will always start each new level with at least three lives. If you finish a level with one or two lives remaining, you will get three lives to start the next area. I believe this is a holdover from the arcade game. It’s very generous, but it also speaks to the difficulty of the game in that death is so swift and frequent that those extra lives don’t always help.

If you’re playing for score, don’t miss Break Time.

This was my first time beating Kung-Fu Heroes. This is a game I have tinkered with a little bit off and on. Mostly I didn’t get through the first castle before turning off the game, but it was fun to pick up and try out a few times. I also played this game for the NintendoAge contest a few years back, but I didn’t get much beyond the third castle. I remember buying my copy of the game at my local game store several years ago when prices were still cheap. This game is still cheap today if you are looking to buy a copy.

I was able to beat the game in about a week. I sure played the game a lot in that one week, however. I think it took me over thirty attempts to beat the game. I took detailed notes on item locations which I found helpful for learning the game. By the end, I had all the item locations memorized that I needed. The first couple days of attempts didn’t get me very far. This was because I was spending all the time combing levels for items while also properly learning how to fight the enemies. Soon enough I was getting to the 6th, 7th, and final castle somewhat regularly when I hit another wall. Many of the final areas have no items along with difficult sets of enemies. A few areas include enemies that cannot be defeated, so you have to wait for them to leave so they can be replaced with enemies you can attack. I could do the early game really well only for it all to be wiped out in a flash at the end. I resorted to warping just so I could quickly get to the end of the game to practice. I beat the game that way once, and then the next day I beat it again without warping. The game loops continuously after you beat it, but the difficulty does not seem to change and there’s no special ending beyond the first loop.

It gets tough when there are no items late in the game.

Beating this game requires good technique and strategy. I found each enemy has either a specific way to beat them or a preferred way to beat them. Mastering the moon sault kick is important since you can dodge enemy projectiles and even get a nice point bonus for jumping over attacks. Then you land on top of the enemy to defeat it. It’s dangerous to jump on enemies that can also jump since they will evade your attack. For them, I approach them from the side and punch them or slice them with the sword before they go airborne. Defensively, I always keep my finger on the B button to moon sault kick my way out of danger, such as when the lightning obstacle quickly appears. I didn’t have much use for miracle kicks offensively, but they are very helpful as an evasive maneuver since you move so fast. It might not be best practice, but I use miracle kicks sometimes to go straight at the open door when it’s surrounded by enemies. Miracle kicks are also useful in the bonus room and they are unlimited for that room only. I just avoid both Uni-Gon and the Dragon. Shuffling back and forth through the quick passage keeps Uni-Gon away pretty easily. I also came up with a nice strategy for the final area. I saved four E-balls and six money bags for that stage since it’s the hardest one. I spent the money bags on a P ball when there were four enemies on screen, and then I went to town wiping out as many enemies as possible using the quick passages. Uni-Gon appears here and I can beat him with the invincibility, and then he drops the fifth E ball I need for an extra life. This level is still awfully tough after that, but every little bit helps.

I enjoyed my time with Kung-Fu Heroes. It does feel a little out of place for a 1989 NES release. The graphics and aesthetic are nice. The music is catchy at its best, and a bit dull at its worst. The controls are fine aside from trying to press A and B together. The action is very quick. This is an easy game to pick up and play for a few minutes or to sit down and try to dig into it. This game is also part of a trend among early NES games I’ve noticed where there is more internal complexity to the game systems than it first lets on. All the treasures with different effects and all the other things to keep track of like miracle kicks and money bags seem so overwhelming for what looks like a simple action game at first glance. Therefore, this game is easy to start playing but tough to master. This is a game for people who like quick action games and don’t mind a challenge in the endgame, but I think it’s also a great NES game if you don’t take it too seriously and just want to carve up some enemies for a little while.

#86 – Kung-Fu Heroes

Build the biggest believable burgers in BurgerTime.

Another plain arcade title screen.

To Beat: Finish 6 Levels
Played: 3/28/2017 – 3/29/2017
Difficulty: 6/10
My Difficulty: 6/10
Video: BurgerTime Playthrough

BurgerTime is another one of the many arcade ports that made its way to the NES. I did not play the arcade version of the game, but I do have some nostalgia for this NES port. I had left the game mostly untouched for the past 25 years as just about all my experience of this game came when I was young. It’s time for me to experience this blast from the past and shed some new light on both this game and its successors.

BurgerTime was first released in arcades in Japan as Hamburger, and then the name was changed over when it came to the US. It was originally released in 1982 by Data East as part of the company’s DECO Cassette System. This was the first arcade system where one could buy a standardized cabinet and load different games to the machine using cassette tapes. BurgerTime also got its own standalone cabinet published by Bally Midway. The game received around ten ports to various computers and consoles, such as Intellivision, ColecoVision, and the Apple II. The Famicom port of BurgerTime was developed by Data East and published by Namco. It was released in November 1985. BurgerTime was brought to the NES in May 1987, this time published by the developer Data East.

There are also a number of sequels and spin-offs for BurgerTime. An Intellivision-only sequel named Diner was released in 1984 where you push balls of food to the bottom of the screen and into enemies. Peter Pepper’s Ice Cream Factory was also a 1984 release in arcades where you build ice cream cones. Super BurgerTime was a 1990 arcade game that is an enhanced version of the original concept. The Game Boy received BurgerTime Deluxe in 1991. Namco released an updated version of the original game for mobile devices named BurgerTime Delight in 2007. Lastly, a 3D version of the game called BurgerTime World Tour was released in 2011 on Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network, with a Wiiware version arriving in 2012.

Who put all this stuff here in the first place?

BurgerTime is a single screen action game. The screen is filled with platforms and ladders, and there are various slices of hamburgers, buns, and toppings across the board. You control the chef Peter Pepper as he must use all the ingredients on screen to build gigantic hamburgers underneath the level. You do this by running across the ingredients causing them to fall to the level below. If an ingredient falls on top of another one, it falls as well potentially setting off a chain reaction. Once all the burgers are assembled, you complete the round and move on to the next stage.

A game like this wouldn’t be complete without enemies, and there are three different types in BurgerTime. They are named Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Egg, and Mr. Pickle. All three enemies behave in the same way by following you around the board. Mr. Hot Dog is the most numerous of the enemy foods. Mr. Egg appears in fewer numbers and he tends to be a little bit smarter as he tracks you. Mr. Pickle appears in the later levels and also tends to be a bit smarter like Mr. Egg. The only way the enemies defeat Peter Pepper is to run into him, so you should always be on the move.

Peter Pepper can use the ingredients to his advantage in dealing with the enemies. If one of the ingredients falls on an enemy, they get squished and you get points. After a few seconds, a new enemy will take his place and join the fray. You can also displace enemies by dropping an ingredient they are standing on. Not only does this knock out enemies for a short time, but it also causes the ingredient to drop more ledges than when dropped alone. You score double points for each additional dropped enemy on the same ingredient, so this is the best way to rack up points in a hurry as well as clear the level more quickly.

A dash of pepper can help if you get trapped like this.

The only weapon our chef has at his disposal is pepper. It is only limited to a few uses but it is incredibly useful to get out of a bind. Simply press A or B to throw a dash of pepper in the direction you are facing. Pepper stuns all enemies it touches and you can run right through them without getting hurt. It can be used as an evasive move if you get trapped, but you can also use it to stack several enemies together on top of an ingredient and then drop them all at once for huge points. You get five peppers at the start of the game and you can acquire additional ones from powerups that appear in the middle of the level periodically. Depending on the level you will find an ice cream cone, a cup of coffee, or a bag of fries that give you points as well as pepper.

BurgerTime has six levels and it only takes a couple of minutes to clear each one. However, it’s a challenging game. At first, it gets overwhelming being chased around by four or five enemies at one time. After getting used to it, the first couple of levels are pretty straightforward. The third level requires you to work your way up through narrow space to reach the top part of the stage. This is a solid test for understanding how the enemies route their way across the level in order to navigate around them. The fifth stage has long platforms without branching paths, leading you to get trapped easily if you aren’t careful. The final stage is nasty, including several ingredients placed on dead ends. Having several shots of pepper handy goes a long way to clearing it. After all six stages are finished, the game loops back to the first level with faster enemies. It will keep looping until you run out of lives.

BurgerTime was one of the very first games my family owned for our NES. If memory serves it was the third game we owned after Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt and Pinball. Therefore, BurgerTime is among my earliest gaming memories. I do remember beating this game as a child by hoarding pepper for the final stage and setting up a super combo with all the enemies included. As we collected new games, I put BurgerTime on the back burner for many years. I played it again in 2015 when it showed up as a NintendoAge contest game. I did not beat the game that week, but now I got to beat the game again for the first time since I was 7 or 8 years old.

The level layouts get tricky at the end.

I beat BurgerTime in one late night, but it wasn’t easy. Stage 6 is the most challenging by far, but Stage 5 is the make it or break it level for me. I typically have to use a lot of pepper because it’s easy to get surrounded on the long platforms, and I need to hold on to as much pepper as possible for the final level. When I did reach the final level, I had some close calls. I was one ingredient drop away from beating the game on my first attempt. On a couple of later tries I botched some near finishes with several lives remaining. I completed the game on my ninth attempt, and I finished it off by playing into the second loop until I lost all my lives.

The one thing I run into trouble with in this game is moving on and off ladders. You have to be lined up with them pretty close to center before you can climb them. To get off, you must be at the very top or bottom before you can move laterally. The inability to make precise movements when you get stuck on an edge makes BurgerTime much more frustrating than it should be. I like it when games automatically nudge you the rest of the way if you start to switch direction just a tad early. That would have really come in handy here.

BurgerTime is a serviceable arcade game port that plays just fine on the NES. As this port is based on an older game, the presentation matches the arcade version. However, on the NES it comes off as a bit sparse. The graphics are plain and include solid black backgrounds. The music is one continuous, droning loop and the sound effects are simplistic. Gameplay is what matters most, and BurgerTime has it where it counts. Rounding up the enemies and dropping them in bulk is satisfying, as is crushing them with a bun or lettuce leaf. It’s fun to play for high scores and it’s fun to work through all the levels. BurgerTime is not a bad choice to consider adding to your NES collection if you are interested in 1980s arcade games.

#48 – BurgerTime