BurgerTime was one of the most popular arcade games of the early 1980’s.  1982 to be exact.  That was the year it was released in the arcades by Data East.  The NES version was released by Data East in 1987.  When I was a kid, I only found this game to be just okay.  The difficulty was very high, and I didn’t feel like spending all my quarters for such short games.  Now I have the game for my NES, and there is no pressure of losing my quarters, I’ve gotten much better at this game, and I love it.

The object of BurgerTime is to make gigantic hamburgers.  At the start of the level the bottom bun is on the bottom of the screen, and all of the hamburger ingredients, such as lettuce, cheese, top bun, and the actual hamburger, are on platforms above.  You guide chef Peter Pepper through the platforms and ladders, and make him walk on the ingredients in order to make them fall to the lower platforms, and eventually to the bottom of the screen where your completed hamburger will be.  In your way are enemy foods.  These foods are hotdogs, eggs, and pickles.  I’m not sure what their beef is with Peter Pepper.  Maybe their jealous that they’re not being used as ingredients, but I don’t know.  This stuff was never questioned in the 80’s, so I will stop questioning it now.  One touch by these enemies will cost Peter Pepper a life.  His only defense is a very limited supply of pepper.  This will stun the enemies, and allow you to safely pass by.  If an enemy is on one of your ingredients when you send it falling to the below platforms, the extra weight of the enemy will cause it to fall further than usual, and also score you extra points.

Usually the NES versions of arcade games have lowered difficulty, but not BurgerTime.  This is just as tough as the arcade version, and that makes for short, intense, challenging, and very fun games.  The NES version also looks and sounds pretty close to the arcade version.  BurgerTime is a fantastic game, and it’s a must have for anyone who likes early 80’s arcade games.

Rating – 8 / 10

Ford vs Chevy is an arcade style racing game released by Global Star Software for the PlayStation 2, and the Xbox in 2005.  I remember it being a budget title at $15 at the time of it’s release.  Usually new games at a starting price this cheap have bad game written all over them, but this one isn’t bad.

Ford vs Chevy: Not as bad as you think.

The main mode of this game is the “Westington Cup” mode.  The first thing you’ll notice about this mode is that it has a storyline.  The story is of two old men sitting on a couch watching The Westington Cup.  One guy is a Chevrolet fan, and the other is a Ford fan.  They bicker back and forth, and try to convince their grandkids as to which manufacturer is better.  Granted it’s not much of a story, but it’s neat for a racing game to have a story, and refreshing for a videogame to have such a lighthearted story too.  Your goal is to finish first in each series of races.  The series are broken down by vehicle types, such as modern muscle cars, classic muscle, trucks, and race cars.  There are races involving 6 cars at a time, point-to-point races, time trials, and missions.  The missions have you do very silly things such as knocking over signs, or counting cows.  All races take place in a closed circuit environments, and include rural and urban areas.  The toughest part of this game is that you have to finish first in every single event to move on.  I have no idea why the game rewards you with a bronze medal for finishing in third place, because you need to finish first or else.  You can upgrade your car between races, but while scrolling through the list of upgrades, the game gives you no clue as to what the part will do.  I just found it easier to save up for a new car.  The actual driving part is pretty good.  The car handling is in an arcade style similar to Burnout, Need for Speed, or Project Gotham Racing.  Also similar to Burnout is that you earn boost by drifting, hitting jumps, drafting, or moving ahead in position.  The boost does not have as a dramatic effect as it does in Burnout, but it is helpful.

The cars look really good for a PlayStation 2 game.  The environments are just okay though.  The sounds effects get the job done, and the music is just generic stock music.  In another driving game rarity, there is commentary going on while you race.  Similar to wrestling commentary, one commentator is a fan of Chevrolet, and the other Ford.  It’s a bit repetitive, but still kind of neat to have.  I raced Ford cars, and the Chevy commentator would accuse me of cheating, or mock me whenever I did a drift.

What I loved best about this game is that it offers some cars that you would never find in most other racing games.  Most other games offer only the fastest cars, or Japanese cars.  This one lets you drive nearly 50 cars such as the Chev Impala, Cobalt, Camaro, Ford Focus, Galaxie, Rachero, and various pick up trucks and SUV’s.  All in all Ford vs Chevy is a fun game, but it’s really tough to recommend it when you can play Burnout, Need for Speed, Gran Turismo, Forza, or Project Gotham Racing.  It you have played those games to death, and love American cars, then I can recommend getting this one too.

With so many of Sega’s great arcade games ported over to the Sega Master System, I am really surprised that the system didn’t catch on in North America.  Out Run is an arcade driving game released in the arcades in 1986, and released for the Sega Master System the next year.  Unlike After Burner, and Space Harrier, Sega didn’t try to make their Master System do things it couldn’t handle.  The result is a slightly scaled down version of Out Run for the Master System, and it was a great idea, because this is a great game.

Twice the Mega Power! I agree. This game is awesome, and deserved much better artwork.

It’s an arcade style driving games that is played from a third person perspective looking behind your Ferrari.  The claim to fame for this game is that you get to chose your own path.  Today there are a lot of games that let you chose your own path, but Sega’s Out Run was one of the first.  The first stage is a coastal stage, and once you pass that stage you will reach a fork in the road, and you’ll get a different stage depending on which direction you chose.  If you pass five stages you complete the game.  There are 15 different environments in all, so you’ll be playing this game for a while trying to discover them all.  The game is timed, and your game will end if you run out of time.  Naturally you gain extra time each time you complete a stage.  The traffic is light in this version, but that doesn’t make it easy.  Sharp curves, and blind crests provide plenty of challenge until you memorize the course layouts.  The game keeps score as well, and that gives you yet another reason to keep coming back to this game.

Out Run on the Master System runs reasonably smooth, and it looks great.  The colours are bright and vivid, and your Ferrari is really detailed.  You can actually tell it’s a Ferrari Testarossa, and you can see both the driver and passenger in your car.  Oddly there are no engine sound effects, so be sure to keep an occasional eye on which gear your in.  For the soundtrack you get a choice of three songs, and they all sound great.  In fact they are so catchy and memorable that Sega remixed the music for Out Run 2 which was released 20 years later.  Out Run is one of the best 8-bit driving games you can play, and it’s a must have for the Sega Master System.

Pro Wrestling was one of many Sega Master System games that I always wanted to try when I was a kid.  Now that I’ve played it, I kind of wish I hadn’t.  Pro Wrestling was released by Sega for the Master System back in 1986, and obviously it is a game based on professional wrestling.  As far as I can tell, this is the only wrestling game on the Master System.  Also, this shouldn’t be confused with the great Pro Wrestling for the NES.  They are two completely different games.

I don’t think I can complain about game prices when I figured out that $49.99 is worth $91 today. Also, why didn’t the artist draw the wrestler’s head?

You’ve got one mode to chose from in Pro Wrestling, and that is a tag team match.  I did some research, and discovered that there are three titles up for grabs.  The Mexican title is the first one, and you have to win 10 falls in order to win the title.  The other ones take 10 falls as well.  You have just four tag teams to chose from.  Each wrestler has their own moves, although those moves aren’t many.  Your wrestler can punch, kick, do a two different moves off the ropes, and one grapple move, such as a body slam or Boston crab.  The “good guys” can climb the turnbuckles, and the “bad guys” can use a steal chair.  Every hit takes off energy from the wrestler’s life meter.  Once that is depleted, their opponent can pin them.  If your wrestler has a submission move as their main move, then you will win if your opponent’s life meter is depleted while you are putting on your submission hold.  Despite being tag team matches, the other wrestlers can’t break up the pin, or interfere in any way.

The wrestlers are small, and are drawn in a super-deformed anime style.  I personally find the wrestler’s a bit too small on screen, and that sometimes makes it hard to tell what is going on.  The music annoyed me, and the sound effects belong on the Atari 2600.  The ref’s count, which is super-duper slow, at least is funny sounding.  Overall I found this game to be very boring, and it’s probably the worst wrestling game that I have ever played.  For a good 8-bit wrestling game, check out the NES version of Pro Wrestling, and skip the Sega Master System version.

You don’t always need to be a fan of sports to enjoy sports games.  For instance I’m not a big NBA fan, but NBA Street Vol. 2 is awesome.  It is a 3 on 3 arcade style basketball game from EA Sports Big released in 2003.  Unlike the NBA Jam series, NBA Street 2 keeps things a tad more realistic.

NBA Street is all about having fun playing basketball on street courts.  Being flashy is as important as scoring points.  Besides the usual pass, shoot, steal and block options, you can also do tricks while dribbling the ball, or shooting it.  Some of the dribbling moves include dribbling between your legs, doing a spin-o-rama, and bouncing the ball off the defender’s head.  You can do no look passes, spin passes, and passes between your legs.  There are so many different dunks that I can’t even count them.  You can also do alley-oops with one of your teammates.  You can execute one of these tricks by pressing any of the 4 shoulder buttons, or combination of shoulder buttons, plus the shoot or pass button.  You benefit from these moves by not only confusing your opponent, but by also filling up your Gamebreaker meter.  Once filled, you can execute a dunk that will not only give you a point, but also take away a point from your opponent’s score.  There are no rules except for a 24 second shot clock, and the games typical end when one team reaches 21 points.

Volume 2. That is a different kind of subtitle, but I like it.

There are a few different ways to play the game.  In the “Be a Legend” mode, you create a player, recruit teammates, and travel the USA to compete against other teams.  By winning games you open up new challenges, increase your player’s abilities, and earn reward points.  The reward points can be spent to unlock throwback jerseys, new courts, or NBA legends such as Magic Johnson, or Larry Bird.

The whole game has this 70’s vibe to it.  Everything from the music, graphics, fonts, and load screens that display facts about NBA legends, it all fits the game perfectly.  The graphic quality is very high as well.  The animations are amazing enough to make some of these outlandish moves seem real.  I’m not an expert on different music types, but the hip hop soundtrack in this game is great.  It has a mellow, sort of jazzy spin to it.  The sound effects are great, and the announcer Bobbito Garcia really adds a ton of fun and energy to the game.  Some of what he says doesn’t make much sense at times, but that’s what makes it entertaining.  I suppose if I had to pick out a flaw it would be to have more options for creating your own player.  I’ve played NBA Street 3, and NBA Street Homecourt, but I think NBA Street Vol. 2 is the best of the bunch.  Being an old sports game, it probably won’t cost you very much, so I recommend getting NBA Street Vol. 2.

Space Harrier has an interesting story.  The manual reads “As Space Harrier, you must save The Land of Dragons, and yourself, from extinction.”  So I guess in order to save the land from extinction you have to obliterate all animals, plants, rocks, robots and machines.  Okay then, so this 1988’s Space Harrier for the Sega Master System, which was first released in the arcades in 1985.  It’s technically a third person shooter, but really it’s more like a flight combat game, because your character flies around using a jetpack.

They don’t make instruction manuals like they used to. Check it out, it’s an entire page explaining how to enter your initials for when you get a high score!

The game play couldn’t be any more simple.  The d-pad moves your character, and either one of the two Master System buttons fires your weapon.  There are no powerups, and no special moves.  You just have to rely on your own skill.  It would seem like my skill in this game sucks, because I’ve only ever been able to get to stage 4 out of 18.  Using a cheat code for 9 extra continues got me to stage 11.  I hate to make excuses, but holy crap is it ever hard to see what’s going on at times.  Part of it is that there are a lot of enemies, and obstacles on the screen at once.  This is a good thing however, because I love games with a lot of enemies to avoid, or destroy.  Unfortunately the Sega Master System is not really up to the task of handling all of this.  Everything moves a bit too choppily, and that makes it harder to anticipate enemy shots, or obstacles.  There are also strange graphical glitches where an enemy, or explosion will block out other objects.

When things are less hectic, the game looks beautiful.  The enemies are highly imaginative, and the colours are trippy.  The music is really catchy as well.  This seems to be a trait of a lot of Sega Master System games.  Space Harrier for the Master System is a tough game, and at times it looks messy, but yet I still have fun playing it.  The games are quick, and I enjoy going for a high score, or trying to make it past the next level.  Space Harrier is also on Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and it’s also available in one of the arcades in Shenmue for the Dreamcast.  If you don’t have those systems, and have a Master System, you’ll have to get Space Harrier.

I remember After Burner on the Sega Master System being quite a bit more expensive that regular Master System games, and that would be because it was a “Four-Mega Cartridge.”  It wasn’t just marketing speak, because “Four-Mega” meant that the game was 4 megabits in size, which is 512kb, or half a megabyte.  This memory is needed, because After Burner is an intense arcade style 3D flight shoot-em-up that was originally released in the arcade in 1987.

The Four Mega Power! I can’t top that one.

Per the instruction manual, you are a Navy air captain flying an F-14 Thunder Cat, and the enemy (who is never named) has a plan to conquer the free world.  Like the KFC recipe, it is so secret that it is hidden in two different locations.  Your F-14 is equipped with guided missiles, and a 20mm machine gun, and you’ll use those to shoot down enemy planes, helicopters, and missiles.  It’s one of the earliest games that I’ve ever played that uses inverted controls, but unlike modern FPS’s, I find that the controls make sense while flying aircraft.  There are 18 stages in all, but the game is tough, and there are no continues, so the farthest I got was stage nine.  Basically I just play this game to see if I can beat my high score.

I had fun playing After Burner, but sadly it’s not a great version of the game.  A beautiful looking flight game with a third person perspective was just too much for the Master System to handle, and the frame rate and controls are really sluggish because of it.  For example, in order to connect with your guided missiles, you’ll have to pull the trigger the instant you saw the enemy, otherwise you’ll never hit them.  I just found it easier, and more fun to machine gun everything.  On the plus side the music is really catchy, and the sound effects are great.  So overall this is a fun game for the Master System, but I’ll recommend getting a version on a better system if you can.

Of course everybody knows about Namco’s 1980 classic arcade game Pac-Man.  It has been ported to many systems over the years, including the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988 by Tengen, also known as Atari.  This isn’t quite like the arcade Pac-Man, but it is a solid version none the less.

You move Pac-Man about the maze eating dots along the way while trying to avoid the ghosts.  Eating a power pellet gives you the ability to eat the ghosts, but it only lasts for a short while.  In the middle of the maze is bonus fruit which does nothing but give you extra points.  If such a game was released today, it would be considered weird, but in the early days of videogaming, these types of abstract games were common.  Pac-Man on the NES starts off pretty slow, but it does pick up speed in later levels.  This was done to make the games last longer, and less skilled players are going to appreciate the lowered difficulty.

The NES version looks pretty close to the arcade version, which means it looks great.  The only differences have to due with size ratio of everything due to the arcade monitor being taller than it is wide.  Pac-Man controls excellently with the NES controller, and most importantly the game play is excellent as well.  Pac-Man is a must have for the NES.

Rating – 9 / 10

From 1999 this is The New Tetris for the Nintendo 64.  What was wrong with the old Tetris?  The answer is that you can’t keep releasing the exact same game over and over and over again.  Another question is whether or not the additions, and tweaks improve the game or not, and if it still plays like Tetris.  I’ve got some good news, and some bad news there.

The trouble with having “New” in your game title is that is looks a bit silly 15 years later.

First of all Tetris is famous game from the Soviet Union where shapes fall from the sky, and you rotate them and position them in order to create unbroken lines horizontally on the bottom of the screen.  First the bad news.  This is not the best single player version of Tetris.  In normal Tetris, and in good arcade games in general, you earn extra points for taking chances.  You earn extra points for making the blocks fall faster, and earn extra points if you complete double, triple, or quadruple lines.  In The New Tetris, you are scored by the number of lines you complete.  Complete 1 line, get 1 point.  Complete 2 lines, and that’s 2 points.  Complete 4 lines, and get a whopping 5 points.  Basically there is no incentive to take the same risks you took in regular Tetris in The New Tetris.  One wrinkle that is added is that if you make a perfect 4×4 square, and that square turns gold or silver.  When you complete a line that contains part of that square, then you earn extra points.  The other addition is that the points of all your games are accumulated, and slowly unlock different “wonders”, such as the Sphinx in Egypt.  When you unlock them, you see them being pieced together with the Tetris pieces.  That’s cool, but the only problem is how long it takes to unlock anything.  To unlock the last wonder, you need to complete 500,000 lines.  In a recent game I played, I completed 60 lines in 6 minutes.  If I kept up that pace, it would take me 833 hours to unlock the last wonder.  In fact I went on Youtube to see what it looked like when completed, and the guy who uploaded the video stated it took him 9 years to unlock it.  And you think that Skyrim is a long game!  All is not lost however, because if you have enough friends who want to play, you can play a 4 player mode.  I didn’t have a chance to try this mode, but multiplayer Tetris is always fun.

Graphics and sounds aren’t that important to Tetris, but I don’t really know where they were going with all of this multicultural stuff.  The music is sort of a electronic tribal type of thing, and it’s not really my preference for playing Tetris, but the quality of it is amazing for a Nintendo 64 game.  It’s surely not boring like most video game music these days.  Bottom line with this game is get it for the multiplayer, but choose regular Tetris for single player.

One of my favourite video game experiences has to be playing Double Dragon in the arcade with a friend for the first time.  It was so fun, and so different from other games that we couldn’t stop playing.  We pumped in about $2.50 each, completed the game, and experienced one hell of a swerve for an ending.  Sure there are a ton of beat-em-ups based in urban environments now, but Double Dragon was one of the pioneers.  Double Dragon was released in the arcades in 1987 by Technos, and ported to pretty much everything back in the day.  I remember getting Double Dragon for my Sega Master System the following year, and I was initially disappointed that the Sega Master System wasn’t able to fully duplicate the graphics of the arcades, but I still had a lot of fun with it.

A rare example of good Sega Master System box art.

Double Dragon of course is a beat-em-up where you control either Billy or Jimmy, and you fight through a gang using martial arts and weapons in order to save your girlfriend.  Your moves are punches, kicks, jump kicks, a useless spin kick, head butts, elbow smashes, knees to the face, and throws.  Punches seem to be the most effective, as they have the best reach, but they give you the fewest points.  Along the way you can use weapons dropped by enemies, such as baseball bats, knifes, whips, and rocks.  These weapons are only available for a short time however.  The enemies are mostly generic thugs, although they spice it up sometimes with these huge giants.  The enemies become more aggressive in later levels.  The environments include the streets, industrial area, a forest, and a mansion.

The graphics look fine for a Master System game, although the characters flicker like crazy, and there is slowdown in the two player mode.  The music is fine as well, especially the music on level 4.  It’s really easy to pick on this nearly thirty year old Sega Master System port, with it’s graphical glitches, short game length, and the fact was later outdone by Final Fight, and Streets of Rage, but I still think the classic arcade action of Double Dragon holds up well today.  I still have fun playing Double Dragon for the Sega Master System, and it’s recommended for those who like 1980’s arcade games, and for those who like to see where an example of where our current games came from.