Uh Oh. I'm actually starting to like Burgertime!

[Inky]

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. I have enjoyed Burgertime.

 

Popped it in the ol 2600 today, and I must have played it for a good half hour...

 

The graphics suck.

THe control sucks.

The music sucks.

 

Yet, I was having a blast playing it.

 

Once you learn the control quirks, and enemy movement quirks, its not so excruciating.

 

Oh, it's nowhere near my top ten 2600 games, but its now nowhere near the bottom either.

 

Now if someone could hack it to make the screens blue instead of yellow...

[Foxsolo2000]

There goes the neighbourhood

[supercat]

Now if someone could hack it to make the screens blue instead of yellow...

 

One of the monsters has to share its color with the playfield; that's probably why it's yellow.

 

Someday maybe I'll look at some of the code to that game. I can certainly understand why it wouldn't fit in 128 bytes RAM, but I would have estimated SuperChip capacity to be about right. With 2K of RAM, I would have thought it possible to implement a 2LK with shifty-sizer shapes for the missiles and the Ball. That could have helped the graphics enormously, especially if there was some coordination between the different animation frames (e.g. make the playfield red, to match the hot dog (entirely done with the Ball). Make one player and missile be light green; use those for two pickles. Each pickle would have two animation frames when its shape was simple enough to be represented by a missile, and two when its shape required a player. The two pickles would toggle between player and missile so as to accommodate these animation frames.

 

Doing a 1LK with shifty-sizer missiles and a shifty-sizer ball would probably be too much (that would require writing three NUSIZx, three HMxx, three ENAxx, four PFx, two GRPx, and an HMOVE. That's sixteen stores. Some could use shared data, but still--no way. On the other hand, a 2LK would probably require twenty stores every two scan lines. With 2K of RAM, that should be a piece of cake (going to a striped playfield would reduce the requirement to 18 stores, and would probably improve the look of the game as well).

[jetset]

To be expected from a Cubs fan.

 

 

 

[Breakpack]

To be expected from a Cubs fan.

 

 

 

 

Ouch,that was mean...

 

[jetset]

To be expected from a Cubs fan.

 

 

 

 

Ouch,that was mean...

 

 

Hence the...

[+remowilliams]

It's cool with me, I have no problem with people liking bad conversions

[Crazy Climber]

I'll give it another try but I'm not expecting much

This is one game I actually like on the Intellivision though, even with shitty controllers

[jpfalcon2003]

I like this one too. You do have to get use to the controls, but once that's done, it's a piece of cake. I've gotten really high scores on this version.

[Uzumaki]

Even if it was hacked, it may be playable only on emulator.

 

Burgertime uses an oddball design with the RAM chip and since only Burgertime uses this scheme, you'd have to sacrifice a Burgertime cart, pray it has separate chips and not blob from hell, and burn in the hacked version, add in a hex inverter to handle A12 (EPROM's /CE line)

[StanJr]

I love Burgertime. There are patterns to success and once you learn them, the game is a lot of fun. Forget the bad graphics and meager sound. this is a good game.

[JacobZu7zu7]

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. I have enjoyed Burgertime.

 

Popped it in the ol 2600 today, and I must have played it for a good half hour...

 

The graphics suck.

THe control sucks.

The music sucks.

 

Yet, I was having a blast playing it.

 

Once you learn the control quirks, and enemy movement quirks, its not so excruciating.

 

Oh, it's nowhere near my top ten 2600 games, but its now nowhere near the bottom either.

 

Now if someone could hack it to make the screens blue instead of yellow...

 

That's because all Mattel games rock... even when they are flawed.

[Foxsolo2000]

I have never liked this pile of garbage. I could forgive the fact that all the enemies but one are flickering squares but I cant forgive the slowness of the chef or the awkwardness of trying to get him to climb the ladders. If I want to play a good version I always plug in my trusty old Intellivision or failing that my Colecovision for it too has a pretty good version

[jpfalcon2003]

I have never liked this pile of garbage. I could forgive the fact that all the enemies but one are flickering squares but I cant forgive the slowness of the chef or the awkwardness of trying to get him to climb the ladders. If I want to play a good version I always plug in my trusty old Intellivision or failing that my Colecovision for it too has a pretty good version

Respect your opinion on this one, although i do like this version. I also have the NES version which is flawless and nearly identical to the arcade. The NES version blows the INTV and Colecovision out the water. The INTV does have one good thing going for it though. Diner (AKA Burgertime II)

[Godzilla]

WOW, because a game has memorizable patterns that allow me to not 'play' the game and just memorize stuff is a reason to like a game? i guess if ur a big fan of being a dog for pavlov.

[Gregory DG]

Someone out there ought to code a new version.

[Lonely Mountain Hermit]

I recall enjoying this one quite a bit as a kid...granted I never played the arcade version, but this was one I remember playing a lot.

[JamesD]

The graphics suck.

THe control sucks.

The music sucks.

I thought that was the description of most 2600 games.

[supercat]

Someone out there ought to code a new version.

 

Given a SuperChip cart, it might be doable. To really do the game nicely would probably require 2K of RAM, probably with more code than a SuperCharger can hold.

 

My rough kernel design would require that levels be symmetrical (though the burgers on them not). The player and all objects would be drawn with a 2LK allowing for nudging and resizing missiles and the Ball on a 2-line basis. The level and burgers would be drawn using alternate lines of the playfield; even and odd lines could be colored differently. The ball's color would appear to be a blend of the level and burger colors.

 

Pretty straightforward as a kernel, if one has enough RAM to hold all the necessary tables. A real Burgertime cart would have the RAM, but no cart currently in production would (4A50 will have plenty once there's enough interest to justify production).