The Meaning of "BurgerTime": A Seemingly Nonsensical Game

[@fl3mbobs]

A fried egg with a runny yolk is really good on a burger.

[@marblemunkey]

Indeed.

[@RemnantCult]

Whenever I go to the waffle house, I always go for a deluxe bacon burger with an egg. Southern style brunch. I was happy the chef knew what I wanted.

[@appleturdpie]

KZbinr has apparently never heard of breakfasts burgers... slanderous tbh

[@unclebob1674]

It was because of Burgertime (on the Intellivision, no less) as a small child I found out people ate eggs on hamburgers and discovered that it's amazing. With this video creator's poor taste in video game systems (for shame!), I'm not surprised they have poor tastes in food as well. 🤣

[@tenebrousoul9368]

The best.

[@Chariot_Rider]

I think that the abstraction of a lot of older arcade games tends to lead to a lot of really interesting potential narrative readings. I think that even games that seem pretty straightforward can actually be quite peculiar narratively, which is interesting to think about. These games ask you to fill in a lot of the details, which inherently leaves itself open for interesting interpretations

[@CptJistuce]

In conclusion: BurgerTime is about making burgers.

[@CorndogMaker]

Burger Time makes more sense than Joust. Ostrich riding knights fighting vulture riding knights whose vultures lay eggs that hatch into more knights and there is an unstoppable pterodactyl who eventually arrives and kills everyone and a giant hand from hell can come up and grab you. It will drive you mad if you think about it!

[@jacklawsen6390]

Early games like this had limited hardware and were often mechanic-driven. The top priority was getting something fun working, making it make sense was secondary.

[@SECONDQUEST]

The title makes perfect sense, it's a game show. Edit: the game is now literally a game of a game show in my head Canon. Those enemies are just goofs in costumes.

[@IgoSplashman]

Thank you! I don't care if the developer intended it that way, a goofy Japanese obstacle course game show really does make perfect sense!

[@tenebrousoul9368]

You're a chef who got kidnapped by a giant. Feed the giant or perish. That's what I always assumed was going on

[@casanovafunkenstein5090]

If you wanted to go there, the game reads like a nightmare resulting from the alienation inherent to the way that fast food is prepared like an industrial production line. The worker is dwarfed by the size of the product and is called upon to produce many times the amount of food he could reasonably expect to consume just to make a basic wage. The burgers all conform to the exact same specification and come pre-prepared, needing only the most basic level of assembly. The other food items will introduce some variation into the work day but even still they are merely distractions from endlessly making sandwiches to be placed behind the counter and sold to members of the public who are never seen. Our protagonist is completely isolated from the preparation of the different items that go into the sandwich and never interacts with the people who consume them. He just assembles them every day until there are no more buns left and begins anew as his next shift begins and the components have been replenished. Does he even qualify as a chef or cook if all he does is pile cooked and prepared food stuffs into a prescribed form? These are the existential questions that we must ask, though maybe we could infer something about the situation. If the chef is unwilling to stop, is he happy?

[@DIASTCartoons]

Burgertime is a fun game, but it’s not my favorite from Data East. That honor goes to Lock 'n' Chase, which is a more direct Pac-Man clone that places emphasize on closing doors instead of power pellets. Also, fried eggs in a burger is tasty.

[@CebolaBros]

Number 15: Burger Time Foot Lettuce The last thing you want in your Burger Time burger is someone's foot fungus - but as it turns out that might be what you get.

[@dawsonescott8428]

Glad to see you approaching this time tested question

[@jswets5007]

Have you ever been to a Denny's or IHOP? Both of them have burgers with an egg on them, because burgers with an egg on them are a thing from the 1920s. As for what Burger Time means; it means eat more beef(brought to you by big oil). 😂

[@TimBitten]

See, I’m the opposite: one of MY earliest gaming memories was Burger Time for the Atari, and it was my absolute favorite game, but looking at the Intellivision version I can see your point. 😂

[@gooeydude574]

If you like this game, you should play the game boy version. It has more variety in stage layouts, better controls and is the best game in the franchise

[@MattSeremet]

I really like BurgerTime for being so silly yet simple. As you said it borrows graphics from donkey kong and I like that amalgamation of things I already know. I had only seen/played it for the first time last year when I went to one of those arcades for adults. Darn it is hard but the silly animations make it wonderful.

[@BastardWolf28]

But in reality, BurgerTime It's about family, and that's what's so powerful about it.

[@drewchaboo719]

Here a gameboy game about this game with a story mode but it called BurgerTime deluxe

[@Cueya]

When we first got our NES, my dad picked it out because he used to cook burgers for my brother & myself ❤️ 🍔

[@MoAli1984]

All of the most important questions are being asked and discussed here

[@mw0099]

This is a multi-million view count type of channel in terms of quality. It's bound to just blow up one day

[@brianeych]

The cook is like a drug dealer. The product gets stepped on but with the right ingredients it can come together with less stomping. The ingredients that make this possible are volatile so strategically avoiding them until the right time may take longer but is ultimately more efficient and rewarding. The food that chases the cook can also be compared to police chasing after a notorious criminal that vandalizes a village's effort to make the worlds largest burgers. I think BurgerTime is quite thought provoking in its deliberate attempts to inform arcade frequents to the struggles of everyday criminals by making it relatable. Americans love stuffing their faces with unhealthy food and miss the sausages that wind up on their burgers but BurgerTime was a catalyst for the 80s health revolution, cop shows and the war on drugs. Bad Dudes was a direct sequel to BurgerTime but Data East realized it was too direct so they decided to make Super BurgerTime but incorporated a jump button to bring awareness to the increasing number of jumpers affected by an unhealthy society.

[@diydylana3151]

This game is a perfect example that these kind of lenses of analysis while funny make 0 sense for most traditional games Its a really good choice of that writer lmao. Its a chasecollect game mixed with traditional platformer movement where the hook is that you don't just walk over dots but walk over this layered thing you put together which is also your main scoring mechanic. In a very abstract sense it makes sense to theme it as a burger asits asif you prepared all the right layers and its roughly the right size. Its cute, easier to understand, easily distinguishable and more satisfying than if it was just random colored blocks. I could even imagine the devs first coming up with a burger theme and that inspiring the mechanic within their limitations. But it'd just be inspirationnto get to a set of mechanics. Its not simulating anything. Then you just make all the other things chef/burger themed as well. Enemies...eehm...just make em food too? You? Youre the chef! Your stun weapon? Eehm, its like pepper spray but actual pepper! And what do you end up with? Something that makes no sense in reality and becomes mostly abstract. Yet, its not actually bad theming at all. It just doesn't really "mean" anything as a whole its there to serve a game to play. Its not like its the OG version of snakes and ladders where it represents a karma system of sorts. Or the landlords game that gave us monopoly where the meaning was critisizing capitalism. Legit the only thing I could think of is it representing the stress of someone working in this caterinf industry trying to be on time in a very vibe based sense lmao. But finding meaning where none is intended is indeed just kinda funny.

[@relo999]

I have to note that the landlords game wasn't critical of capitalism but rather just anti-consumption tax system we currently still use, while the alternative part of the game (which was done away with by parker brothers) was very much pro-georgism (tax based on land ownership). It's also done very poorly, both parts emulating both tax systems and economics poorly both amounting to not much more than "Yeay Georgism, booo consuption tax". Granted socialists did try to coopt the game as a criticism of capitalism as a result of how poorly it emulated economics and the tax systems it tried to represent.

[@diydylana3151]

@relo999 I knew typing it that way would end up biting me I didn't really know how to put it without making an entire sentence, because I forgot which particular thing it was trying to show. Just like a particular area of an economic system criticism of sorts is what I meant not necessarily that it was like fuck capitalism or something xP

[@relo999]

@@diydylana3151 Ohh I know, it's just a bit of a pet peeve of mine. And it's not like Georgism is relevant in the modern age so it's easy to forget.

[@KehHs-l8b]

The real Dr pepper

[@polygonvvitch]

Imagine not thinking fried eggs are great on a burger smh my head

[@s0urp0wer5]

Shake your head your head man

[@nefariousyawn]

So I don't see the chef as stepping on the ingredients, but shuffling them off the shelf as he walks past them.

[@pros_0143]

Never knew about BurgerTime! Really informative video.

[@Ratralsis]

0:44 Hey, happy Friday to you, too, man!

[@TabrisRebuild]

Need a Terrence Malick style adaptation of BurgerTime. *wistfully* “You see the [pickles]…they tell you anything is possible.”

[@LuciaS_VA]

fried egg on hamburger IS NOT BAD you stop this slander !!!

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

I like it!

[@TimBitten]

The meaning of Burger Time is: “Haha, silly chef get chased by ingredients come to life but still gotta cook burgers for the giants and also there’s ladders.” Can I have my PhD now?? 👨‍🎓

[@SeanLBurns]

I'd love to see a video on King Of Kong. That it's so obviously staged and mostly uninterested in the game itself is fascinating

[@acquij]

clicked on this video on a whim and am glad I did, very interesting insight. I'll look into proceduralist rhetoric further, thank you for covering that

[@porshprix4286]

My take on Burger time was the chef having a nightmare😂

[@relo999]

I think Burger Time and other more stereotypical "game-like" games really show the fundamental flaw of proceduralism in that the completely disregard the system in an attempt to (poorly) form fit film theory. It is an attempt to legitimise the whole claim of "games are art", while fundamentally not understanding what art is and what games are and taking arm chair criticism as understanding of art. It's method of observation not fit for purpose beyond games that attempt to emulate film and thus fit neatly within the boundaries of procedutalism; which, granted, in the modern age is quite common. It's the inability let games be art as games first. Yet it's an extremely popular way of treating games, as cinema theory is rather well established (and probably with it growing during the same time KZbin and "media criticism" on it became popular might also have something to do with it. Who would suspect people making video's and movies like film theory, shocking.) Also fried runny egg and sausages are great on burgers.

[@dawsonescott8428]

I’m confused by your comment. It seems like you’re implying the analysis of Burgertime is weak because they’re just copying over film studies analytical techniques into a formally different environment. But isn’t proceduralist rhetoric the attempt to move art analysis as applied to video games AWAY from film theory by centering the interactivity of the medium and individual experience of the player in its analysis? For example, the conclusions in this paper were drawn by analyzing game strategy, and films don’t have a viewing strategy, after all.

[@relo999]

@@dawsonescott8428 No, I'm saying proceduralism is an attempt to make games fit within the more classically understood film theory. As a lens to view interaction through to make interaction work with film theory. It ignores that games are inherently abstract systems, by virtue of them being rule based systems requires them to be, and falters when applied to games that have less fluff pushed over them. Burgertime, while still having some theming, really shows that the moment a game becomes more abstract the more grasping at straws is required. BurgerTime still is and plays like BurgerTime the moment you peel off all theming, and the theming only really is there to attempt to (poorly) contextualise (and probably market) the game. It's an attempt to find something where there is nothing to find, classic confirmation bias. I'm not saying this analysis is weak because of burgertime, I'm saying it's weak because it shows the inherent flaws of proceduralism. The whole whole analysis reminds me of the Sokol affair and similar Science wars issues but applied to game analysis.

[@CoolMagmar]

Never in my life snapped my head so fast, what you mean fried eggs don't combine with a burger!? What is this nonsense! They are the best thing ever. But like ok the game is just a big what?? I miss this era of games when was just everything goes and sense went out of the window in the first dev meeting

[@minecraft12lol]

BurgerTime? It's BurgerTime.

[@SixStringsGeek]

Interesting topic and well put together video but it could've been 3 mins long (which would get you more views btw ) First 5 minutes are just rambling about how "burger time doesn't make sense" OK we get it, anyone who played the game knows that. Had to quit midways cause it was just rambling.

[@HoosierCallin]

Burger King Foot Lettuce

[@moosevelt9148]

BurgerTime, and this video, kicks ass :)

[@gooeydude574]

Was anyone else disappointed by BurgerTime Party?

[@vgcrumbs]

Fryin and buyin

[@jimmywhyte7181]

It is not obvious lol. Its one screen.

[@eduardoaguilar7361]

Intellivision is ok, better than Atari. He-Man game is aight

[@Arcad3n]

Delightfully silly video ❤

[@PlasticCogLiquid]

Obviously you've never worked at a burger joint.

[@AverageDrafter]

Based on real events. Official found footage of the "Burgertime Incident" - kzbin.info/www/bejne/qputYYeiaLx4hLM

[@gooeydude574]

The best part of the game is when Peter Pepper says “It’s BurgerTime” and burgered all over the place

[@mRahman92]

It's about stacking burger! Duh! 🍔 Now explain TAPPER.

[@risingrevolt]

Did you just read off the research paper and present it as your own idea?