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