BurgerTime

BurgerTime is Data East's 1982 kitchen nightmare: you are chef Peter Pepper, and the whole game is assembling four giant hamburgers by walking across their stacked ingredients - stepping on a bun slice drops it one floor, and when every layer of a burger lands on the plate below, it is done and the next one begins.

The comedy is that the ingredients fight back. Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle and Ms. Egg patrol the platforms, and your only weapon is a limited pepper shaker that briefly stuns whatever it hits. The real tactics are environmental: dropping a bun while an enemy stands on it sends the enemy falling with the ingredient (multiple enemies on one falling bun means a big bonus), and the rung-ladders between floors are one-way chokes that define every chase. It is a puzzle-action game disguised as a lunch order, it became one of 1982's biggest hits in the US through Bally Midway's release, and its loop - step, drop, stun, sprint - is as clean as Pac-Man's.

• ▸Build burgers by walking across stacked ingredient floors
• ▸Falling ingredients squash enemies - multi-enemy drops score big
• ▸The pepper shaker as a scarce one-tap stun resource
• ▸One-way ladders that turn every chase into a routing puzzle