For a few years now, Numskull has been releasing scaled down versions of arcade classics. It’s a strategy similar to Arcade1Up which managed to worm its way into big box retail with its smaller versions of classic and not so classic arcade games, but with Numskull they’ve gone even smaller. Their quarter scale machines are just that – a classic arcade machine at one fourth the size. At least, I take them at their word in that regard since the game we’re talking about today is one I don’t have access to in its original form so if this is not exactly to scale then that’s for someone else to confirm. These releases though caught my eye when they first showed up and have continued to do so, but the price has always kept me from biting. After all, this is certainly not the ideal way to play an arcade game. Most of these are 40+ years old and available virtually everywhere which makes this type of release more of a gimmick or decorative item than anything. However, I do love a good micro version of a popular item. In that, I’m like Myron Reducto from Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law who has an obsession with tiny things. I don’t know what it is, but when something I like is available in a tinier version it makes me happy, but only if it doesn’t lose function and Numskull would seem to fit that description.
Of course, if someone were to go out and buy one of these things that’s only part of the decision. The other is to decide on just what to get? For Arcade1Up, I have just two releases: The Simpsons and Marvel Super Heroes. The Simpsons is the only “full size” cabinet I own with the Marvel one being a “barcade” which is just a smaller version that sits on a table or bar. The Marvel one I received as a gift and it’s a solid one to have since it contains three 2D fighting games on it and that’s a style of game that works well on repeat plays. The Simpsons, in contrast, does not. It’s a brawler and they’re shallow, but I just love The Simpsons so I wanted to add it to my rec room and I waited for it to go on clearance before finally taking the plunge. With Numskull, a lot of the games are classic, see if you can get the high score, sort of things. They do work well to some degree as a game designed to be replayed and mastered, but they’re also old and it can be hard to justify playing such games when so many other, more modern titles are constantly available in a given household. The thing is though, the $250-300 starting point for a lot of these meant it didn’t really matter. I was not going to spend that kind of dough on a gimmick. If any were to go on steep discount then sure, but I honestly didn’t think that would ever happen.
Enter Woot, Amazon’s discount storefront. It was in the spring that they had the Numskull version of BurgerTime available for $70. This ordinarily would cost $230 so while $70 is still a lot for a gimmick, it’s also a pretty sizeable discount. While it wasn’t the game I had my eye on, it certainly fit the bill as something that would be worthy of replaying. And for the record, the game I was hoping would hit such a price was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but really just so I could stick it with my quarter scale action figures. I didn’t actually want to play it, I can do that far more easily in other ways, but thus far that has only hit as low as $200 from its MSRP of $300 and it’s unlikely to ever dip below $100 so BurgerTime it is.
BurgerTime is a game originally released in 1982 by Data East for the DECO Cassette System. That was a series of arcade cabinets designed to be altered and have their game swapped out when things started to get stale. It was one of the early platform titles following in the footsteps of Nintendo’s legendary Donkey Kong. In it, the player takes control of a chef by the name of Peter Pepper tasked with assembling a series of hamburgers. Trying to prevent Peter from doing so are some enemy foot items. What’s the hamburger’s greatest enemy? Why, the hot dog (or sausage) of course! Joining the hot dog is a fried egg and a pickle slice. I’m not sure why the egg and pickle, both solid additions to any burger, are trying to obstruct Peter, but perhaps we shouldn’t pay it any mind. The game tasks the player with navigating a sequence of platforms via ladders to walk over ingredients for the burgers that need to be constructed. Walk over them and they drop a level. Peter must get all of the ingredients to fall through the level and into place in order to clear the level.
BurgerTime has six, looping, levels and the ultimate goal is to collect the highest score. Peter has few maneuvers at his disposal to avoid enemies as he can only walk along platforms and scale ladders. He does have access to pepper and hitting an enemy with pepper both stuns them and makes it possible for Peter to pass through them. Peter only has five doses of pepper to start, but collecting points will cause power-ups to appear on the screen for a short amount of time which can replenish Peter’s pepper reserves. The real skill of the game is in navigating the baddies and using them to your advantage. When Peter walks across a portion of a burger, it drops one level. However, if it has an enemy on it then it will drop multiple levels which can help speed things along and increase your point totals. The game basically turns Peter into a pied piper of sorts as you want to get enemies following you so that you can drop ingredients with them on it. Enemies located below falling ingredients will also get taken out by them, though they can re-enter the fray. As levels advance, the game gets harder by creating more choke points on the map. The first map is pretty basic while the second is shaped like an inverted pyramid. It’s much easier to avoid enemies near the top, but towards the bottom they can more easily box the player in. Contacting an enemy is death and Peter has just three lives, but can accumulate more at certain point total intervals.
BurgerTime is a simple game, so it translates pretty well to a tiny arcade cabinet. It requires just two inputs to play: the four-way joystick and the pepper button. The joystick does have a touch more play to it than I’d like as sometimes I feel like it’s not as responsive as it could be, but that could also be the game which requires some precise positioning in order to ascend or descend a ladder. Repeated plays have helped me to largely improve in that respect, but it does make me wish I had access to an actual arcade cabinet to see if it feels the same (I haven’t played BurgerTime prior to this in 30+ years). The screen is nice and bright and the sound comes through cleanly. The cabinet works best when placed on a table, but it’s not too big to just plop on your lap as well. The build quality feels really nice and it’s quite lovely to look at. The marquee lights up when it’s on and there are buttons for player select and the coin returns, though they don’t all actually do anything in the game. The cabinet can be played plugged into a wall outlet, but it also has an internal battery that is advertised to get over 2 hours of playtime. In my experience that seems to be pretty accurate and it comes in at the high end of the estimated time. Since this is an emulated arcade game, Numskull did add some features via the bios so if you just want to see everything the game has to have without the necessary skills needed to get there you can toggle on invincibility or infinite lives to do so. And like the real deal, it will keep track of high scores so it gives you something to shoot for. That’s right, I’m coming for you Ken!
Numskull’s quarter scale arcade cabinet is about what I expected. It’s a quality machine that is quite fun to look at, but is also surprisingly fun to play as well. Is this the best way to experience BurgerTime (or any of the games available)? Probably not, but it’s also not the worst as there were plenty of ports to home consoles for BurgerTime that came up lacking. This is a 1:1 recreation of the arcade experience just in a smaller package. It’s pretty addicting, though also dated. BurgerTime has never been my favorite game from this era, but it’s one of the better ones. I mentioned that TMNT was the cabinet I was really hoping to land some day, but for superficial reasons and to sate my TMNT fandom. As far as actual games that I’d want to play, it’s pretty much BurgerTime, Ms. Pac-Man, and Bubble Bobble of the available games. I’m not a big shooter fan so I wouldn’t want any of those so I can’t be disappointed with the fact that it was BurgerTime that ended up being the one I got. Will I get more? Probably not. They would have to hit a similar low price point and be one of the few games I have my eye on. And now that I have one, I don’t feel the same level of curiosity that I felt before. If this is something that interests you and you can get it for a similar price then I think it’s worth it. It’s hard to set an actual price on it because it is pretty superfluous. I know I wouldn’t pay the original sticker price, but I might have been willing to go more than the $70 I got it for.
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