Beef Drop VE is a port of the popular arcade game Burgertime, which Ken Siders first ported to the Atari 5200 and 8-bit computers. 7800 owners are in for a special treat, as the 7800 version is even truer to the original arcade experience, and features better graphics than the 5200/8-bit version, making the 7800 version the definitive release of Beef Drop VE.
The object of Beef Drop VE is to score as many points as possible by making hamburgers. To do so, Chef Pete must completely walk over each ingredient (buns, patties, lettuce, and more) in order to drop it to the next level. When all of the ingredients reach the tray at the bottom of the screen, the hamburger is complete! Assemble all four hamburgers to advance to the next round.
But in this fast food joint, the food itself can be fatal. While Chef Pete is scrambling to make his burgers, his mortal foes, Frank, Mr. Yolk and Dr. Dill chase him relentlessly. If any of them catch Chef Pete, he loses a life. If Chef Pete loses all his lives, the game is over.
Pete is not without recourse, however. By pressing either fire button, he can sprinkle a dash of pepper on his foes. The spicy substance stuns his foes for a few seconds, giving Pete a chance to make a quick escape. But pepper is precious, and Pete only starts with five dashes of pepper. Collecting an ice cream cone, coffee cup or french fries earns Pete one additional dash of pepper.
Beef Drop VE began life as an April Fool's joke in our Atari 5200 Forum and quickly turned into a real homebrew development effort! For all you wanted to know about Burgertime and more, please visit burgertime.info. We held a Beef Drop Label Contest to design an original label for Beef Drop VE, and the contest was won by Henry Lee. Henry's label design graces the label and manual, with additional artwork featured inside the manual.
Get a Beef Drop Box!

If you'd like a boxed copy of Beef Drop, please select "Box Upgrade: Yes" at the top of the page before adding Beef Drop to your cart. Our boxes are professionally printed and include a box insert to hold your Beef Drop cartridge in place. We want you to play our games, so we have not sealed or shrinkwrapped the boxes in any way, allowing you easy access to the game cartridge and manual.
These boxes are the same size as boxes Atari produced for their games "back in the day". They look great sitting on a shelf with your other boxed homebrew games, or alongside games from the classic Atari 2600 library. We only have a limited number of boxes for each game, and there is no guarantee they will become available again once our supplies are exhausted. Click on the images to the right to see larger photos of the box.
Additional Information
Beef Drop VE includes the cartridge and 12-page, full-color manual. Supports both NTSC and PAL television standards.
The VE version of Beef Drop does not contain the POKEY audio chip that the earlier, numbered release of Beef Drop contains. This means the audio uses the internal 7800 TIA audio circuitry, just as nearly the entire 7800 library does. Because of this, we are able to sell Beef Drop VE at a lower price than the version with the POKEY chip and can produce this version in larger quantities.
You can read more about how the 7800 version of Beef Drop evolved by visiting our Atari 7800 forum:
http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=59998
Author | Ken Siders |
Number of Players | 1 - 2 |
Controller | Joystick |
Cartridge Size | 32K |
Label Design | Henry Lee |
Manual Design | Tony "Xot" Morse |
Enter Beef Drop from Ken Siders...This is some *great* porting of an Arcade classic. POKEY sound featured is the icing on the cake, but the cake itself is what really shines here. Colorful, well designed characters, capturing the Arcade spirit and look beautifully, including all the board layouts. Prior to Beef Drop, having played it on the 2600, I was content at the time. Having any home version, period, was practically good enough for me in those days. It was so cool in my eyes - 'block' graphics and all.
It wouldn't be until the 90's though, that I would acquire or at least play other ports such as ColecoVision (Very good), C64 (Very poor), and the NES, which is (disappointingly) only a decent port at best. Beef Drop is my definitive and go to home port of BurgerTime. It plays really well, having not just one, two, or three difficulty settings - but a total of five (Child, Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert). It is near impossible to imagine any player, at any skill level, not discovering a setting they find both enjoyable and challenging.
Since this is not a game that requires constant use of the fire button(s), except to throw the occasional pepper, in addition to there not being any real fast or/and hairpin directional movements, any controller - joystick or gamepad - for the most part, should work really well.
Missing out on the POKEY sound and left with TIA for the audio in the is VE edition, the background melody is still respectable; although losing a little on scoring and overall enjoy-ability. Nonetheless, it is no 7800 Donkey Kong in the sound department, and again we're taking icing on an already delicious cake.
A must have on the 7800 for the Arcade enthusiast or for anyone that enjoys a well-playing and well-crafted game, ported over excellently. Needless to say, highly recommended
A must have in each collection.
Fantastic, more homebrews please.
I was only going to give this game a four out of five but it was good to get my girlfriend interested and playing (she really liked Burgertime, and isn't always interested in my Atari games), so I'm going to have to go with the five!
The graphics in Beef Drop VE are excellent and the game play is spot-on. The previous non-VE edition used an additional chip to improve the audio, but I can't say that I missed it any - the sounds in this version are already well done. Besides the usual assortment of difficultly levels (nicely laid out in the manual) there are also several extra modes available including "Atkins", "Vegetarian", "Mirror" and "More". These are pretty-much what you would expect, with "More" adding four new boards after the standard ones.
If you liked the arcade version of Burgertime and you own a 7800, order up a serving of Beef Drop VE.
Today, I am lucky to be able to remember those memories thanks to this excellent port of Burger Time by Ken Siders. Ken's attention to detail is incredible. Beef Drop looks to take good advantage of the 7800 graphics. The physics seem spot on as well, making the game as memorably enjoyable as the original was back in the day.
So you are wondering if you should buy Beef Drop? Really? Here is a news flash... the rest of us are wondering why the heck you haven't already ;)
for the 7800. This game
has excellent graphcs.
The bonus games are great. I always felt that the 7800 was "short
changed" I would like to
see more games for the 7800, maybe Pac-Man or a
version of Frogger or
perhaps a tetris style
game.