Nintendo is Great is a Substack devoted to playing and exploring every game ever released for a Nintendo console/handheld in chronological order.
BurgerTime
PUBLISHER: Data East
DEVELOPER: Data East (port by SAS Sakata)
RELEASE DATE: Nov. 27th, 1985 (JP), May 1987 (US)
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Arcade, Atari 2600, Apple II, Mattel Aquarius, Commodore 64, Colecovision, Famicom Disk System, Intellivision, Mobile, MSX, Switch (via Arcade Archives or G-Mode Archives), PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4 (via Arcade Archives), TI-99/4A, Sharp X1, Wii Virtual Console
There are six stages in BurgerTime, but you’ll be lucky to get past the first two. Between the burger assembling, the sentient food, and the chef’s poor running abilities, BurgerTime might be the hardest arcade port ever made.
You control Peter Pepper, a chef yearning to move beyond burgers, but unable to break into the high-end restaurant scene. One evening, a nightmare grabs ahold of him and takes him to hell: neverending burgers, bigger than himself, and anthropomorphic pickles, hot dogs, and egg yolks out to kill him for no reason at all.
To survive, Peter must run over the ingredients – lettuce, meat, buns – and assemble them at the bottom of the screen into a competent looking burger. The ingredients are spread out over many levels connected by ladders. When you run over each ingredient, they only fall one level - unless an evil foodstuff happens to be on them, then they’ll fall two levels. Otherwise, you’ll have to tediously run over each ingredient multiple times to assemble the burgers in each stage.
Peter Pepper’s terrified, he hates where he’s ended up, but for all his turmoil, he still can’t escape the food onslaught that has it out for him. The wieners, the yolks, the pickle slices, they’re all so deliciously dangerous. Even if he kills them by crushing them with a bun or a lettuce slice, they always come back, sometimes right on top of him. Black pepper stuns them, but supply is limited. Navigating ladders is tricky, also. Sometimes Peter gets stuck on a ladder when it looks like he’s on the ground. Since hesitation leads to death, death is constant. The game gives you five lives, two more than what was considered normal for the time.
Data East knows. BurgerTime isn’t just Peter Pepper’s nightmare. It’s yours as well.
Straight from the Arcade
*images courtesy of Arcade Marquee, Just Geek, The Arcade Flyer Archive, and MobyGames
Other Versions
COLECOVISION
INTELLIVISION
MATTEL AQUARIUS
SHARP X1
TI-99/4A
*images courtesy of MobyGames
Castlevania
PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Konami
RELEASE DATE: May 1987 (US), Dec. 19th, 1988 (EU), Feb. 5th, 1993 (JP)
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Amiga, Arcade, Commodore 64, Famicom Disk System, Game Boy Advance, Mobile, MSX, Switch (via Arcade Archives), PC, PlayStation 4 (via Arcade Archives)
Castlevania pushes the NES forward. It places you in a lived-in gothic world that’s equal parts terrifying and inviting. The haunting visuals, the stunning music, the unsettling atmosphere, even Simon’s grunts when he gets hit, they all work to create an enveloping realm, as much an experience as it is a game.
Simon Belmont, master of the Vampire Killer, patriarch of the Belmont family. For ages, he and his family have been battling Count Dracula and his minions, seemingly forced to fight until either the Belmont bloodline expires, or Count Dracula is well and truly defeated. Belmont’s whip is aces, but other weapons, like axes, stopwatches, and holy water ease the journey. For some reason, the latter items are shrouded behind candlelight within Dracula’s castle. As if the Count wants to have a fair fight with the weary warrior.
Dracula’s no slouch, and neither are his minions. Within eerie moonlit gardens and aching castle walls, Medusa heads, fish men, birds, and skeletons dwell; name an undead evil creature, Dracula’s recruited them. Everyone complains about the Medusa heads and birds that knock you backwards into a pit, but the hunchbacks are the wiliest creatures in the game. Hit ‘em when they land next to you or they’ll hop around, like deranged monkeys and drain Belmont’s life bar. Not even the bosses are that frustrating.
Most early NES games settled for less, as third-party developers were still learning the strengths and weaknesses of the console. A little profit was better than nothing, so they often came up with a simple (occasionally broken) idea, then off to stores it went; Super Mario Bros. was the forward-thinking exception, not the rule. Castlevania, however, was Possibility incarnate, a fully formed entity unto itself. With it, Konami showed all third party developers what was achievable on the NES.
Straight From the Arcade
*images courtesy of Arcade Marquee, Castlevania.fandom.com, The Arcade Flyer Archive and MobyGames
Other Versions
AMIGA
COMMODORE 64
DOS (EGA)
*all images courtesy of MobyGames
Ikari Warriors
PUBLISHER: SNK
DEVELOPER: SNK (port by Micronics)
RELEASE DATE: Nov. 26th, 1986 (JP), May 1987 (US), Aug. 10th, 1989 (EU)
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Atari (2600, 7800, ST), Amiga, Apple II, Arcade, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Mobile, MSX, Switch (via Arcade Archives), PC, PlayStation 4 (via Arcade Archives), PSP, ZX81/Spectrum
Ikari Warriors is meant to be played with another person. There’s just no way around it. Paul and Vince don’t work well without the other. While both warriors’ movements are slow and mechanical, at least together they can make a dent in the enemy forces. Alone, Paul’s just a lumbering beast, strong and stupid. He doesn’t have a prayer.
The Ikari Warriors think that just because their muscles are larger than their enemies’ muscles, just because they don’t need shirts, that moving quickly isn’t for them, they’re above it. But they’re wrong. The enemy is afraid and plentiful. They move like jackrabbits, and they love pulling the trigger. Paul and Vince saunter, they take their time, they shoot casually. Their deaths are inevitable and unnecessary.
The game offsets the boys’ natural proclivity to die by giving them vehicles. And the vehicles help, sort of. The tank and the chopper do move them forward faster than they would on foot, but they’re not invulnerable. If the vehicles take enough hits or run out of gas, they’ll explode, and the boys will be charred corpses, no better off than they were on foot.
Power-ups do give you a hand here and there. Increased grenade and bullet power are always welcome additions in a destroy-em-all action game like this. But Ikari Warriors never produces what you so desperately need: faster movement for Paul and Vince. The boys, God bless ‘em, just can’t be bothered.
And what else is there? If the Ikari Warriors have the appearance of strength but are unable to perform the tasks required of them, then they are, in fact, weak. The game doesn’t need reduced difficulty. It needs a Paul and Vince who are equipped for the job. Firepower is great, but moving quickly in a crisis is just as important. Ikari Warriors doesn’t understand that.
Straight From the Arcade
*images courtesy of Escape Pod Online, EightyOne Arcade Bar, The Arcade Flyer Archive and MobyGames
Other Versions
AMIGA
AMSTRAD CPC
ATARI 2600
ZX SPECTRUM
*all images courtesy of MobyGames
Burger Time was such a surreal experience! Happy, upbeat music plays while poor Peter Pepper runs for dear life from a mob of hot dogs and fried eggs. It truly is the stuff of nightmares.
I wrote a little about Burger Time in my post about Activision's Pressure Cooker, another game about fast food cooks working under strange and terrible conditions.
https://daysoffictionpast.substack.com/p/activisions-short-order-sam-is-a
I wonder how Burgertime on the Intellivision plays. It seems a little less intimidating with a smaller stage. Meanwhile I've never even heard of the Mattel Aquarius! I thought I knew all the old consoles by now. It looks like it was on sale for 4 months, so that might explain it.
I've always liked Burgertime for some quick action but like many of these single-screen early arcade titles, it doesn't have much staying power.
As for Ikari Warriors, I'm pretty sure we thought this game was pretty cool, despite its flaws, when I rented it and a friend came over to play. There weren't many 2-player games like this at that time, in fact this seems like the first 2-player SHMUP/run-and-gun game on NES, whichever you want to call it.
But I'm pretty sure we played Contra shortly thereafter and that one blew our minds while filling the same conceptual space. When mom kicked us out of the house and told us to get some fresh air, we grabbed some toy guns and played "Contra" in the backyard. We never gave much thought to Ikari Warriors again.