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POSTED 18/12/11


BURGERTIME WORLD TOUR

Konami
Xbox 360/XBLA (also on PS3/PSN, Wii/Wiiware, PC)

If ever there was a perfect time and place for a Homer Simpson quote, this would be it. But that’d be too gosh-darned-diddily easy.

For those less rickety than us, BurgerTime was an early 1980s arcade game which, by the very nature of its vintage, was resolutely 2D. You controlled a little chefinistic dude called Peter Pepper (who apparently picked a peck of pickled pipers), climbing ladders and traversing Donkey Kong-esque beams. These held hamburger ingredients – patties, lettuce, cheese, sesame seed buns (but we don’t remember special sauce, pickles or onions – hey, advertising had no effect on us as McKids) which tumbled to the level below as you gradually assembled burgertastic burgers, whilst avoiding or flinging condiments at mobile ingredients that wanted you dead, mister.

It was fun, in a clunky 1982 kinda way.

Now, woe-betide anybody should update a game to the 21st century whilst keeping the core play mechanics intact (except Namco, who rock at it), so the peeps at Konami (and we’re fucked if we know how they ended up with the rights to this) farmed BurgerTime out to somebody who believed tinkering was a wise move.

It wasn’t.

Now the 2D girders have become 3D towers vaguely reminiscent of ’80s classic Nebulus, except shit. There are numerous platforms that open, shut, squish you and more over 50 levels, and new enemies abound. They’ve basically tried to take a trusty fish and chip shop burger and go all wanky gourmet with it like those places that insert spurious apostrophes into their names. It hasn’t worked. What’s worse is that it could have, but controls and collision detection that we’d be complimenting if we called them clunky do their damnedest to destroy any semblance of fun or innovation.

They succeed. No vegans are crying over this one, but we are.

take me back to the start...

 



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ALL WRITTEN CONTENT COPYRIGHT © AMY FLOWER 2008-2018. GAME IMAGES COURTESY OF RESPECTIVE GAMES COMPANIES.