Burgertime
Burgertime is a frustratingly addictive arcade game released in 1982. You play as a chief called Peter Pepper who is assembling burgers whilst being chased by giant snausages and rotten eggs. Fear not though, you do have one defence against the bad ingredients. You can toss pepper at the bad food to stun them for a moment. The aim of the game is to assemble the burgers by walking over each part so it can drop down the levels until it finally lands on the plate at the bottom. You have to avoid the bad food as they chase you because if they touch you, you lose a life and have to start from the bottom of the level your playing on. Burgertime was created by Data east (the now bankrupt Japanese video game developer and publisher) and was created for release on its DECO Cassette System. The game was popular in arcades when first released but never really became popular again when released on other consoles. One reason could be because games released with the newer consoles had much more interaction than games designed to be arcade games.
Interaction
Interaction is something that makes Burgertime so frustrating. You (as the player) can navigate Peter pepper fully around the level and press the space bar to toss the pepper at any time but that’s as far as it goes. The frustrating part of this is that if you make one little mistake it could be game over. ‘Greg Costikyan’ wrote an article ‘I have no words and must design’ in which he breaks down gameplay into ‘identifiable chunks’. Interaction is one of those ‘Chunks’.
‘The game stat changes in response to your decision. The outcome of the game will differ depending on your decision, the game interacts with the players’ (Costikyan- 1994)
If we look at the interaction as being when a player makes a decision that changes the outcome of the game, like Cosikyan’s method, the player has full control of the interaction in Burgertime. Every move the player makes determines the outcome of the game. For example if an annoyingly smart snausage is on the platform to the left and the player chooses to go left they chose to loose a life and get one step closer to losing the game. If they move right they can avoid this.
The interaction in Burgertime gives the game its addictiveness. Your every move can change the outcome of the game giving it that replayability that all arcade games need. After playing this game once, I grantee you would be hooked on trying to constantly improve and change the way you play the game to proceed to the next level and therefore achieve the games goal.
Struggle and goals
There is only one aim of game: to stack the burgers to gain points. The way you go about doing this is essential to achieving this goal. You start the game with 5 lives and 5 sprays of pepper. There are various ladders and platforms in each level making up a maze like arena for peter pepper to navigate around until all burgers in each level are fully made and you move on to the next level. All is not well though as bad toppings will try and prevent your burger making quest and they do get very annoying. There are two elements in the game that cause a struggle:
· The bad toppings
· The layout of the level
The bad toppings constantly chase after peter pepper all over the map. If a bad topping touches you, you will lose a life and from what I’ve played of the game there is no way to regain a life once lost. The amount of lives you have at the end of each level carries on through to the next, and its very hard for a first time player to learn to ration their lives so that they may have enough for the next level. This is one negative aspect I’ve found with Burgertime, the lack of lives make it very hard to be able to play through all the levels (I myself only managed to get to level 3!). The Patience with how long a player will play a game can only go so far and I guarantee that this is a game that tests this patience. The level structure has two major parts, the platform that peter pepper can run across and the ladders connecting the platforms in a maze like style. As you progress through the levels, the layout of the level gets increasingly harder for you to successfully navigate around. The spaces between ladders become smaller and it becomes difficult to dodge the toppings because of this. A slight touch from a topping takes a life. The pepper spray does help with tricky situations within the game, but there has been a few times whilst I’ve been playing the game that I’ve used the pepper, gone to run across the baddie and I’ve still died. The struggle within the game has a huge influence on the players’ experience. It causes one simple emotion that I’m sure I’ve mentioned at least twice in this review so far; frustration, pure blind frustration. However I think this is by far one of the best elements of Burgertime. It’s that frustration that causes the player to play just that one more time to see if they can get just a bit further. Costikyan writes in his article that ‘a game is an interactive structure that requires players to struggle toward goals ’ and you can tell that this is an element in games that makes a game successful.
Endogenous meaning
The endogenous meaning in Burgertime is the burgers. The burgers are the objects within the game that have the most value. Once you stack each burger part on the tray you are rewarded with a number of points that total towards your high score. Burgers give you the most points within the game but in the real world there not the highest valued things. Endogenous meaning is another ‘identifiable chunk’ of gameplay in Cosikyan’s article. He talks about what endogenous meaning actually is. ‘ A game’s structure creates it’s own meanings. The meaning grows out of the structure; it is caused by the structure; it is endogenous to the structure.’ The rules and objectives in the game create the endogenous meaning within Burgertime. The high score system means that any object that would give the player points in the game would create that object to have an endogenous meaning. The rule that you have to stack each part of the burger successfully before moving on to the next level would give the burger parts the highest value within the game and this create its endogenous meaning.
Another object within the game that has an endogenous meaning is the ice cream. The ice cream appears from time to time in the middle of the level, but only for a short amount of time. If collected within the time limit you gain not only another ‘pinch’ of pepper but also the same amount of points you would get if you knocked a piece of burger onto the tray. This is the only random element within the game and could help turn the game around for struggling players.
Types of game
Chance or that random element is an aspect of gameplay that is discussed in James Newman’s article. He talks about the variety of different types of games and how to categorize them.
‘agon in which competition is dominant; alea where chance and randomness are key; ilinx in which pleasure is derived from movement; and mimicry in which games are oriented around simulation’ (Newman- 2004)
If we were to look at what Newman has wrote and try to categorize Burgertime, it would belong to more than one category. I believe that Burgertime is made up of mostly ilinx. This is because the movements are key to winning the game and moving on to the next level so when a right movement is made the player gets some happiness from that. I also believe that Burgertime is made up of Agon. Agon because of the competition of getting on the high score board on the game and also the competition of competing against the bad toppings.
Other variations of the game
In all remakes of the game the basic dynamics of the game have stayed the same. The mechanics of the game react the same to the player’s inputs. There is one version of Burgertime that I want to take a look at and it’s called ‘patty panic’. The biggest difference with this version of the game is that it’s aimed at a completely different target audience. The mechanics remain the same as you still use the arrow keys to control you character and your only defence against the baddies is to throw pepper at them. What makes this version so different is that the graphics have been completely changed and as a result (I feel) the game has lost some of its charm. ‘Patty panic’ is a version of the game that is based on the cartoon show spongebob square pants and uses the characters from the show as well as the graphic style for a Burgertime revamp. After playing ‘patty panic’ I was a little disappointed for a few reasons. The feel of the original game had completely changed, which was surprising considering how little patty panic had changed compared to the original. There was none of that frustration or that driving force that the player experiences from playing the original.
In conclusion I feel that Burgertime is a fantastic game. It really shows what retro games taught us about the basic principles of designing an enjoyable video game. It’s a game that I recommend to anyone who wants to play a game with great game mechanics and aesthetics that drive the player to play the game over and over.
Bibliography
Costikyan, G. (2002) I have no words & I must design: Toward a critical vocabulary for games. In: Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings. pp.9–33.
Newman J. (2004) what is a videogame? Rules, puzzles and simulations Defining the object of study pp 22
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