It's pretty good!

I think it's interesting how different developers approached the Game Boy. Some attempted to recreate what was happening at the time on home consoles, and very few of those games hold up well. Some made games entirely with the Game Boy's limitations in mind, and those are the bulk of the better games on the system. Others decided to expand on what they had been doing with comparable hardware in the eighties, and those are often the best of all.

BurgerTime Deluxe is kind of the Donkey Kong '94 of BurgerTime. Approaching each new level like its own puzzle. It's actually pretty close to something like Flicky or Mappy, where you're scouting out safe routes and wasting enemies' time before a gap emerges in their path that you can exploit to break rush through.

I think the burger theme throws some folk off, or makes them dismissive of the mechanical design, but it's just a good visual metaphor for layered objective targets. You run through each layer of the burger, and it drops to the platform below. Time it right, and you can trap a line of enemies under a big slice of beef. When it works, it's really great.

I think the game's at its best in the looping levels. The ones that always ensure you have a way out. There's a lot of dead ends in BurgerTime Deluxe, and you frequently find yourself in hopeless scenarios. I don't think that's particularly fun. It's kind of the game's downfall, but it's also the aspect that meant new customers wouldn't be done with their new Game Boy cartridge after an hour.

Give the NSO version a shot, though. There's fun to be had. I know it's a Data East game. Just try it.

Reviewed on Mar 16, 2023


2 Comments


1 year ago

"I know it's a Data East game" 😭 why you gotta do them like that

1 year ago

Apologies if that was Too Crude