Cerise Magazine

My grandmother was always more interested in things of the future than she was in eating dinner with her extended family. She and my grandfather bought the Intellivision in the early 80’s for the grandkids to entertain themselves with, and according to my mother she played it more than my brother at the time. BurgerTime was reportedly her favorite, and I’m fairly sure she was the best at it out of all us who tried to attempt it. Would that she could teach me her secret.

BurgerTime is a classic that seems to elicit an extreme reaction in everyone who knows about it: either extreme like (on my end) or extreme dislike (on my sister’s end). It also helps that it was released for almost every major system at the time, including the Apple II, the NES, and the arcade, so pretty much every person I know who grew up during the 1980s remembers or at least has heard of this game from a friend. I usually have to explain what the Intellivision is, but from what I’ve seen of screenshots and gameplay, the game is basically the same across every platform.

Gameplay

You play as Peter Pepper, an apparently innocent chef just trying to make some burgers. I never really figured out for whom, but the point is that he’s a chef. Each level has a series of ladders and platforms, and on the platforms sit ingredients. The gameplay is pretty simple: move up and down on ladders, and try to walk across ingredients. Each time you walked across one, it would fall one level lower, bumping everything down one level as well. Your goal was to get all of the ingredients to stack on top of each other at the bottom, making several whole burgers. Sounds pretty simple, right? And what kid in the 1980s didn’t love burgers?

Your enemies don’t love burgers, that’s for sure! In some sort of fast-food conspiracy, Mr. Pepper is constantly on the run from, you guessed it, demon pieces of food. Giant, six foot tall sausages, fried eggs, and pickles emerge from the blackness at the edge of the screen and chase you around the ladders and platforms. Your only weapon against them is pepper spray, further reinforcing the danger that Mr. Pepper is in. If they touch you… something… happens? I was never clear on this. Your character turns into a little hand-like creature and seems to submit to the evil food. After four tries, you submit forever and we can only assume that Peter Pepper’s burger-making days are over. Heavy stuff for a kid’s game, if you ask me… Or maybe I just over-thought things a bit.

What made this game so much fun is fast-paced action, the same thing that made most arcade games of the early-to-mid-80s so popular. You enter the level at the top, and you can’t leave until every last burger – even the tomatoes! – has been made. The enemy food pieces continue to run after you, climbing ladders and (although it was probably coincidence) banding together to trap you in the corner, and all you had was that last top bun to put down… ah, but again, they’ve got you. Even right now I’m itching to play it, remembering my long-ago vow that I would one day beat level three. It reminds me of Prince of Persia, in a way; it’s tough, but every time I play it I find that hours have gone by because I wanted to vanquish every single piece of food. And someday… those pickles will pay, I swear.

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Retro Review: BurgerTime

October 2007 Issue

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