Game:

BurgerTime (1982)

Duration: 1:37

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83

Anyway, the REAL reason why the sudden interest in bombarding you with BurgerTime out of left field and even in advance of the day's normally-scheduled nonsense is 'cause... well, it's a bit strange.

As already mentioned in relation to BurgerTime itself as well as every so often with regard to the various other uploads related to its properties I've made to date, Data East is no longer with us. Its properties are scattered to the wind more or less, many of them collected by mobile game developer G-Mode and therefore at least still alive and ripe for licensing and general potential redistribution and resurrection, for better and/or worse. Among these properties, of course, is BurgerTime.

So a small Green Bay independent developer and a digital publisher with an emphasis on retro games got together... and this is what we got: BurgerTime: World Tour...

I'm really not sure what to feel about it yet, but the most pressing actor is one of the uglier truths of the digital distributionscape is that licensing agreements can expire and instead of becoming scarce, games can just flat out be delisted and made persona non grata in the eyes of the vendors at any or all steps of the continuum and thereby make (potentially) good software totally unavailable for all... which scares the heck out of me, seriously.

This is one of those cases. BurgerTime: World Tour will disappear (forever?!) from PSN, XBLA, and WiiWare (although apparently the WiiWare version was severely gimped in terms of the game's total content: less than half the stages, no cutscenes, only one generic environmental backdrop, no multiplayer of any kind, and just ONE gameplay background song for the whole thing) ...and allegedly there was to be a sale on all platforms, but we know WiiWare wasn't built for sales at all and neither PSN nor XBL seems to be making much of a hullaballoo over it anyway, but the final hours are upon us... the game will vanish from the various marketplaces on April 30, 2014... which, based on this video's publication date... is quite a bit more than merely "imminent"...

So, me being me... I decided a sale price and impending burger apocalypse coupled with the original game FINALLY managing to win me over was enough of an excuse to give it a try. (I've done worse in the name of experimental fast food, after all... but I don't wanna talk about it... hhghghh...)

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So here's our first impression of things that this game has to offer... a title screen! ...let's see what the opening demo has to offer... ... ...nothing? (Am I weird for assuming such things are "standard" to video gaming, especially if your roots are in the arcades, where a literal "attract mode" was a big deal?!) Ah well, I won't hold it overly much against them, because the BurgerTime theme is pretty nifty as a song rather than a brief jingle. There's also... a weird little... slow-progressing parade with Peter Pepper and his various enemies.

I am a little surprised to find the offer of local and online multiplayer, since my unfamiliarity with the series has led me to the belief that it would only be an alternating multiplayer affair at best, but it would seem that they incorporated simultaneous semi-cooperative head-to-head play, so its inclusion here is a welcome surprise.

My goal here (at least for the time being) is merely to get a sampling of the game's natural flavors and share my immediate findings with anyone within earshot like some crazy person on the streets with a sign reading "THE END IS NIGH!" ...because it would be accurate to say that the only reason why I ever even heard about this game was because it was being digitally discontinued.

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