Retro Review Tuesday: Burgertime for Atari 2600

Introduction

I have to start of by saying I love Burgertime. It's one of those games that you can't fathom why anyone would come up with, let alone actually make it and successfully sell it. Just in case you've lived under a rock since the eighties, the concept is this: You're a chef who exclusively makes giant burgers. Burgers so giant that they can only be assembled by placing the pieces including: lettuce, cheese, tomatoes and buns, on a large scaffolding, and must be walked on, (presumably by special sanitary chef shoes) to make them drop. While being chased by sentient wieners, eggs, cheese, and bread sticks. Now you might be wondering how on earth that could be fun and possibly where the heck tomatoes and lettuce that big could be grown. But, it's one of those things it's best to just accept. A game about a plumber in a parallel universe doesn't sound fun either but we all know it is. However, sometimes a port to a different console goes horribly awry sucking all the good out of an otherwise fantastic game and unfortunately that's what we're about to see here.

Overview

Controls are very simple, you use the joystick to move around, and the button to toss pepper. Unfortunately they're extremely sluggish and unresponsive. The ladders are especially terrible and it's very easy to get stuck getting on and off of them.  And the simple act of using the pepper freezes the entire game for a little while.

Graphics are terrible, even by Atari standards.  Peter (your chef) is the only thing that looks remotely like what he's supposed to be. The wiener/sausage is strangely shaped blob, the eggs and cheese are simply flickering squares and the breadstick is just a colored line. When the power-ups show up on the screen they're pretty indistinguishable (the coffee is the closest to looking like a real item) and cause all the sprites on the screen the flicker terribly.

Soundwise, it's surprisingly good. It's a pretty solid rendition of the original arcade music. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. The other sounds are pretty good as well. The burger ingredients make a pretty satisfying thud when they hit the bottom.

Gameplay

Generally you start off an Atari game by choosing your difficulty. This one doesn't have difficulty options, if you play with the difficulty selector you just choose more players. Next up you'd normally have to push start, not here though. Why bother kids with a pesky title screen or even the classic Atari staionary first screen, just instant action, so you better hope you're ready.

So you've turned on the game and have prepared yourself to hit the ground running for some fast paced Burgertime action! YEAH! *fist pump* Well..not so much. In reality this is the slowest game of Burgertime you'll ever play. Your chef moves at the speed of an extremely depressed snail, and the horrendously animated food enemies move just tiny bit slower. So you walk slowly from ingredient to ingredient, knocking them from one level to the next. However, you have to be careful otherwise you can get caught by a flickering cube (the egg or cheese), a bouncing line (a breadstick) or perhaps even an indistinct blob(the sausage)! Luckily even if you found yourself trapped behind a dubious looking square, there's always the pepper which

traditionally freezes enemies for a few seconds. allowing you to get away. The  pepper is a
little different  this time around. In order to use this  "pepper" you have to be directly facing an enemy who's practically on top of you. Simple in theory, crappy in practice.  Making matters worse, it's apparently super pepper, as in addition to freezing the baddies it freezes the entire game for a few seconds...rendering just a little better than useless. But hey, at least you can get more of it by "rushing" to the second tier down and grabbing some random collection of pixels that's supposed to represent ice cream, french fries or coffee.

So if you can make you way past bad graphics, sluggish controls and poor execution in the first level you're rewarded with four more levels of the same thing. When you finish up the fifth level, normally you'd expect a frozen screen, a points countdown or some of those cool seizure inducing Atari graphics we've all come to know and love. Sadly there is none of that to be had in this Burgertime, instead the game simply restarts from level one.

Conclusion

This version of Burgertime is playable, and by playable I mean it has the barest elements of a video game. It's honestly the worst port of any game I've every played. You can suffer through it if you feel really determined to see all five levels. It's better than playing the ET game, but not by much. Really it's not even something you can accuse of being a product of the fabled problems of arcade to home porting as the Intellevision version is great. This is just some lazy programmer's plague upon Atari owners.

~Stephanie

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Retro Review Tuesday: Haunted House Atari

Haunted House was a serious contender doing during our October, Halloween themed games. We didn't have the space for it then, but it's still a great game and deserves to be highlighted so we thought it would be perfect for this month.

Introduction

Haunted House is one of the first survival horror games to ever grace a home console. The concept, like most for games of this period is a bit thin, but it simple enough. You've come to the dark dusty mansion of the deceased Zachary Graves searching the 4 floors for 3 pieces of a precious urn. The catch being of course that the house is dark, scary, filled with bats and spiders and is of course haunted. It's not Silent Hill, but it does a surprisingly good job of keeping you on edge.

Overview

This is a standard joystick game so the controls are simple. You move around the house with the joystick, light matches with the button. When you encounter items you simply touch them to pick them up, you can only hold one item at a time (other than the urn) so you will automatically switch when you run into a new item. You can drop items as well by hitting the button if you've already got a match lit.

Graphically it's just there. Not the best looking game and not the worst looking game, it gets the job done.

Sound wise there's not a lot going on there's no music and what you do get is a few atmospheric sounds. They're primitive, but effective. As you travel around you hear the sound of your own footsteps and the sound of entering a new floor. When an enemy is around, you get the wailing of a ghostly chilling wind. Should you happen to touch that enemy you hear cracks of thunder while your eyes roll around in fright.


There are only three items but in typical Atari fashion you'll have no idea what they are without a little info.

Magic urn: It's broken into to three pieces which on their own don't really look like anything so if you pickup something weird looking it's probably the urn. It's the whole reason you're traipsing around a dark haunted mansion infested with rabid bats and poisonous spiders. What sort of magic does it hold? Who knows, but you can find out once you've got it all together and escape. (My guess is some sort of hallucinogen given the way the whole house color shifts when you win)

Magic scepter: A completely mysterious relic that keeps ghosts, bats and spiders away from you so long as you're holding it. This sounds a lot more useful than it really is, the holding one item at a time thing means you'll almost never be holding this.

Golden Key: First off let's get this out of the way, I know it's green, but the booklet claims it's golden. We'll just assume it's gold plated copper and has gotten a nice patina over the years. Basically a skeleton key, it opens any locked doors you find. This is a must have item in the later levels and not remembering where you left it is likely to get you killed.


Gameplay

You start off at the front door they only part of you character visible is the whites of your eyes and your pupils, A pretty familiar darkness scenario if you believe in the validity of old cartoons. If you're playing on the first difficultly level you can see the basic layout of whatever floor you are current on. You can go either up or downstairs by exiting up, down or to the left or right. To find the urn pieces and other helpful items you'll need to light a match otherwise it's too dark to see. Matches only last for a set amount of time before going out on their own, but you've got an infinite supply of them so you can light all you want. The only caveat is that the number you use affects your score at the end, but unless you're playing it tournament style with a bunch of geek friends there's no reason to be particularly concerned with that.

Occasionally while you're searching you'll encounter an enemy, or several as sometimes more than one appears at once. When this happens there will be a flash of lightening and a howling wind will come up to blow out your match you'll have to run out of the room or you'll lose a life as soon as they touch you. Usually they won't spawn right on top of you so they should be easy to avoid. Unless it the ghost of Mr. Graves, which is significantly faster. If you're near him when he pops up, you can pretty much kiss that life goodbye. If you can avoid the ghost of Mr. Graves, getting the urn and getting out is pretty simple given you've got 9 lives to work with. It's when you up the difficulty that things get interesting.

In the harder difficulty levels things get a lot harder for you. The mansion is now so dark you can't see the walls unless you light a match. You can no longer pass freely between all the rooms, you'll have to find a key. Additionally as you'd expect the enemies spawn faster and more often. This combination of factors can get you running scared when the vengeful spirit of Mr. Graves blows out your match and you find yourself running away blindly into a locked door or unseen wall. Making matters worse is that they can and will switch floors and rooms to come after you. It's never really scary but it can definitely give you a shot of adrenaline.

Conclusion

Haunted House brought a lot of new concepts to home gaming, scrolling corridors, multi-screen playing field and a whole new genre, survival horror. As I said before it's not quite something in line with fatal frame or a resident evil, but it's stood the test of time admirably, it is still a very playable and very enjoyable game. It's really a bit of a hidden gem, it should be regarded as a gaming classic and should be in every Atari fan's collection

~Stephanie


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Retro Review Tuesday: Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Atari

Today's retro review will be an extra special super vintage Atari double feature dedicated to the two releases by the short lived games division of Wizard Video, Halloween and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Introduction

It's a common cliche. "It's so bad it's almost good." Maybe that's not quite what describes Halloween on the Atari 2600. But something makes us keep coming back to it. Perhaps it's the repetitive music, the amusing death scenes, the character designs or maybe just the captivation of seeking an end to one of an entire generation of games not exactly known for having one.

Overvew

Michael Myers is loose in the house. You must run from this pixelated maniac and avoid his "attacks" until you can find the weapon and...well, you don't really stop him, you just...poke him and he...runs away. Then he comes back. Faster. Perhaps you...shouldn't have done that.

The controls are simple. If you're lucky enough to be enjoying this piece of work with a joystick then it's as simple as push up to move up, pull back for down, left goes left, right goes right and you can even move diagonally, Fancy! You can push the button to perform actions like controlling and using the weapon or drag one of the kids along as bait. (If you're on an emulator then it's whatever you set the controls to) Overall, the function doesn't seem to be too bad.

The graphics of the game are Atari graphics. What else can be said. Your character does manage to be clearly female, however, and everything is reasonably distinguishable. You can even tell that your lives are represented by what are supposed to be pumpkins.

The music is...yeah, get used to the music. The classic score from the Halloween series plays every time you see Michael Myers on the screen (And you'll see him on just about every single screen). Although when he's not yet present the lack of music can almost be seen as...eerie?

Gameplay

You start off inside the corridor of a "house" consisting of a random collection of hallways. Right away, Michael will come after you, just stabbing his "knife" over and over. Contain your laughter, (although, really...just look at that) and run to either end of the screen to switch areas. Unless you're at the end of a hallway, Michael will appear in the next area and just about everywhere you go. Some areas will have a "door" you can run through to change areas of the house or you can change floors by going through the doors at the hallway ends. Some uppers rooms flash from light to dark, blinding you to your own whereabouts and the position of Michael, often proving to be problematic for you, if not fatal.

The game can actually manage to "scare" you since Michael doesn't always appear at the same time, or from the same areas. He can appear from the right, from the left, or even from a doorway, and this can cause you to jump a little, especially if you're heading in that direction. It's especially bad in flashing room where it's difficult to tell where your own character is.

Ultimately the goal is to lead the children you're babysitting to the safe rooms, the ends of the hall. The truly glorious thing about this is that Michael seems to be more interesting in killing them than you. Sure, perhaps that's not how it works in the actual series, but who's to prove if your character is even Laurie? Frankly I've taken to calling her Connie just for the hell of it. Maybe it says for certain in the booklet who exactly Connie/Laurie/Ms.Feminine pixels is, but I don't have that luxury. Anyway, by pushing the button, you can take children with you or just use them as bait to distract Michael while you haul ass out of there. This becomes especially useful the further you get in the game. When Michael touches them, he decapitates them so you lose a chance to save one but it's better their heads than yours. The hardest part will be trying not to laugh, and leaving the area.

Additionally, you're looking for the "weapon" to use against Michael so that you may gain points. What kind of weapon is it? Who knows. Maybe you see a knife. Maybe you see a hammer. Maybe you're something of a cynic and just see a collection of black pixels, but at any rate, when you find this item, you push the button while standing over it to pick it up. Then, once you encounter Michael again, you wait until he's just about on top of you, and push the button to "thrust" your weapon, giving him a real mean poking, and he'll run away until...you change rooms. Do this twice or save enough children and you'll go up a level. Meaning when you see him again, he'll be faster. Eventually, he'll get so fast that he matches your speed and you can no longer outrun him, just avoid touching him.

Should you let ol' Stabby get too close, before you know what could have possibly actually happened in your altercation, you'll find yourself headless, with delightful little "blood" pixels erupting from your neck. Not unlike a beheaded chicken, you run away, seemingly in distress, off the screen. You've now lost a life. .You repeat this process until you lose all three. Then the game is over, and there's nothing else to do now but reflect upon this interesting little experience. If there's an end other that to this game, most people, including us, wouldn't know about it.

Conclusion

If you're a horror fan, a retro-gaming fan, or like me, both, then honestly, this is a must have for your own Collection of Geekery. However, this game is incredibly rare, and expensive for just a used, boxless copy. So it would be unrealistic for me to tell you to go buy it. However, if you've got a computer (and I have it under decent authority that you do) you just may want to download this oddity. It's certainly one hell of a novelty, and it's hard not to somehow enjoy it.

~RM

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Introduction

Even back in 1983 companies were trying to bombard consumers with different incarnations of their franchises by marketing shoddy poorly conceived merchandise. Wizard Video was no different. Being the original home video distributors of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre they thought it would be a great money maker to introduce their film and themselves to the budding video game market. The result was not well received by most consumers but it was innovative. It brought the first horror video game into the home market, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Overview

In a role reversal from most of the survival horror games of today, you play as Leatherface, the terrifying chainsaw wielding nutjob. Your goal is simple, to kill as many screaming Texan women as possible before you run out of gas.

Controls are simple, it is an Atari joystick after all. But, it's still got everything you need to be a killing machine. You move up down left and right with the joystick and run the chainsaw with the button.

Soundwise it's pretty standard for the Atari. There's the sound of Leatherface walking, the sound of firing up your chainsaw, the shrill beep (scream) of a potential victim and the sound of a triumphant kill.

Graphically, once again, it's an Atari game, you can't expect much if you're used to all sorts of newfangled 3d rendered perfectly polished games. But for the time period they were pretty good. Everything is easily recognizable from the girls, to the cow skulls to the truck in the background. There's even enough detail on Leatherface to give him a grimace. My only real complaint here is that Leatherface's chainsaw is the saw color as his body leaving things open to some rather unwholesome conclusions.

Gameplay

The game starts of with you as Leatherface out in the Texas countryside looking for fresh young victims. You can walk either left or right seeking your prey. You'll know you've found one when you hear the extremely shrill beep to signify their screams. You're faster than they are so if you just keep up the chase you'll eventually get close enough to use the chainsaw leaving a bloodied corpse in your wake. Though you'd better enjoy it in the moment because it disappears pretty quickly leaving you to wander off looking for another victim to quench your blood lust.

This sounds pretty easy so far, but it wouldn't be much of a game without a few obstacles to overcome. The first of which is gas, your chainsaw uses a bit of gas while you're just standing around letting it idle and it uses considerably more every time you fire it up. Leatherface can only carry enough for three refills so no matter how important it makes you feel, it's best not to leave the chainsaw running when you're not using it on some poor woman.

The Second problem is that on your way to the fresh meat you'll have to avoid fences, bushes cow skulls and wheelchairs (one has to wonder if the developers of the silent hill series started off their young lives playing this game). If you run into one of these obstacles you'll have to use your all purpose handy dandy chainsaw to cut it out of the way using some of your precious gas in the process.

The final obstacles is your victims themselves. The women will try to dodge you when you get close and will change directions, suddenly appearing on the other side of you This is not only annoying, but a big gas waster. The women in pink seem to be slightly more prone to doing this effectively.

Once you've used up all your gas by either slaughtering victims or cow skulls, the screen goes black and Leatherface is left with a useless chainsaw. Meaning Leatherface himself is totally powerless. While a stationary useless Leatherface sits on screen grimacing off into oblivion one of his potential victims comes up behind him and gives him a sift kick ending the game.

Conclusion

While wantonly killing is fun and a great stress reliever for a short period, it gets pretty old pretty quickly unless you've got friends to play and compare scores with. Playing it makes it pretty clear that it wasn't ever supposed to be a great video game, only a great marketing ploy.
However while not the best Atari game you can play, not by a long shot, this game has earned is place in the annals of classic gaming for it's unique "killer perspective" and bringing video game horror into the home.

~Stephanie

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