I love BurgerTime, it’s one of my favorite arcade games.  It’s one of the few games that could pull me away from Pac-Man when I was a kid.  Other games in the arcade that could do that were Dig Dug, Q*bert, and Pengo.  So when I found out that Chili’s restaurant was doing a promotion where you could play a version of BurgerTime to promote their Big Smasher Burger, I was intrigued.  You could even win a contest where if you get a high score on the game, you could win burgers for life.  I also read somewhere that you could also win a full size BurgerTime arcade machine, but I’m not sure if that’s true or not.  In order to win, you had to sign up for their mailing list, so I didn’t want to do that.  Unfortunately, by the time you read this, the contest may be over.  I wish that when restaurant chains would do promotions, they’d make them last longer.  Going out to eat is so expensive anymore, that I don’t get to do it as often.  So by the time I can plan to go, the promotions are usually over.  But I still wanted to write an article about it anyway because I thought it was interesting and I really like BurgerTime.

I guess since this game was really meant to advertise and not really worry about being any good, I guess I shouldn’t review it.  But you know what?  I am anyway!  You can play it on a web browser, but I couldn’t get it to work on my iPhone or iPad.  So I’m reviewing it on the PC.  Instead of Peter Pepper, you play as a walking chili pepper with sunglasses.  I guess that’s supposed to be the Chili’s mascot.  You play BurgerTime as normal, where you walk around and climb ladders and when you walk over pieces of burger, you can make them fall one floor, squishing enemies in the process.  The only big differences here is you get less pepper to freeze the enemies, and you can’t stop when moving.  It was important to be able to stop in the arcade game so you could wait and time when you sent burgers down to squish enemies or have them fall on the same ingredient to make them go farther.  So here that strategy is more difficult.  The graphics are touched up a little bit, but still decidedly 8-bit.

But the really big difference between this and the arcade game are the enemies.  Instead of Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Egg, and Mr. Pickle, the enemies here are fast food workers and a different mascot for each stage.  These mascots have particular movements and attacks.  For instance, the pig mascot on the first level is really big and can smack you with his spatula, so you want to give him a wide berth.  The second stage mascot is a dinosaur on a skateboard, and while he only goes horizontally and can’t climb ladders, he does go really fast.  The third stage has a walking greasy brown bag and can place greasy spots on the floor.  He’s pretty easy to avoid.  But the fourth stage mascot sure isn’t.  He’s a pirate and is big and fast and can send cannonballs to make the burgers go down, squishing YOU in the process.  Anyway, that’s pretty much the game.  I guess it’s kind pointless to write about it since by the time you read this, the promotion may be over.  But I really like BurgerTime so I wanted to write about it anyway!

Kid Factor:

Seems silly to write a “Kid Factor” on this game since you may not be able to play it anymore.  But when people ask me what kinds of games are good for kids to start with, I usually recommend classic arcade games because they’re easy to understand and usually not very violent.  I grew up with these kinds of games and I turned out ok.  When I was a little kid and played BurgerTime for the first time, I went straight home and cut out a chef’s hat and pepper shaker out of paper and played “pretend” BurgerTime around the house.  So who says video games don’t encourage kids to use their imagination!  OK one more funny story about kids and Chili’s.  When my brother Jeff was really little, we went to Chili’s and he said the chili pepper in the apostrophe in the logo was a strawberry.  I said, “Jeff, since the name of the restaurant is Chili’s, don’t you think that’s a chili pepper?”  He said, “NO, that’s a strawberry!”  I just thought that was funny.

Tags: Game Reviews