Retro Game Review: Burgertime

Game: BurgerTime
System: Arcade
Manufacturer: Bally Midway
Year: 1982
Ranking: Four Quarters

Growing up hamburgers came in one of two forms. The first, most popular option, was the fast-food burger. McDonald's and Burger King reigned supreme in this court. The second, much more common option, was the home BBQ burger. Here well-done was the way they were done. Think charcoal brisket burger. Imagine my surprise, when I was sixteen and discovered that there was such a divine item as "the gourmet hamburger", and that it existed steps away from my physics lecture at a place called Mr. Bartley's Gourmet Burgers, henceforth simply referred to as Bartley's.

Bartley's burgers are culinary masterpieces. Layer upon layer of delicious ingredient is piled carefully on top of each other to create towering skyscrapers of burger goodness. The first time I beheld a Bartley's burger, I had to take several moments to figure out how I would fit the behemoth into my mouth. Staring at that burger, I was reminded the arcade classic BurgerTime. In that game, the protagonist, Peter Pepper, is chased around a multistory maze desperately trying to construct the world's largest burgers while being chased by anthropomorphized food. If I assume that Peter Pepper comes in at an average height of about 5 feet 9 inches tall (1.75 m), then those arcade burgers he's making are a whopping 11 and a half feet (3.5 m) thick!  

I'm not really sure why Peter is making those burgers, but it sure is fun to try to help him out. BurgerTime combines winning elements of two wildly successful early arcade games. First it draws its construction site platform and ladder aesthetic from Donkey Kong. Second, it borrows the chase and maze mechanic from Pac Man. Here ghosts are replaced with 6 ft tall BBQ items. Although a bit unusual, a competing greasy spoon down the street from Bartley's, the Tasty, did serve a slippery burger topped with cheese, bacon and a fried egg. Layer on top of the proven arcade elements new features like falling burger parts and Peter's pepper sprayer, and you have a winning combination.

What keeps the game fresh is the various and sundry ways one has to deal with the enemies. First, there is the standard avoidance tactic. As near as I can tell, none of the food items have the same sophisticated algorithms seen in Pac Man. They simply head for Peter Pepper. In fact, they operate under a bit of a delay since they can't change direction while they are in the middle of a ladder, unlike Peter. Second, Peter can hit them with a dash of pepper to freeze them. This allows him to pass right through them without harm. Third, Peter can drop burger parts like hell from above, knocking Food Foes over and sending them back to their spawn point. Finally, he can start walking across a burger ingredient, wait for his enemies to walk onto to the same piece, and then finish his trip across to drop both the burger piece and the hostile food at the same time. The key to racking up a high score and wrapping up a level fast is to group the Food Foes together and get them to walk onto the topmost bun all at the same time before dropping everything and everyone.

One aspect of the game that I've wondered about inordinately is speed. How fast is Peter Pepper trying to get away from those fiendishly tall foods? I figured that he had to be humming along if he wanted to make those burgers fast enough not to get gobbled up himself. Using the average height of French Chefs and measuring the amount of time it took Peter to travel between known points on the scaffolding I generated some rough numbers. 

The first number I calculated was the speed that Peter Pepper traveled up the length of the first level. For the Arcade version, Peter scales the ladder at a fairly good clip of 5.4 mph. To put that in perspective, a typical person walking on a flat surface travels at about 3.1 mph. A good jog, one that I might use at the gym on any given day, is about 6 mph. Peter Pepper is practically running up those ladders! I was also happy to confirm that I got similar speeds on all three of my emulation machines. In the Atari 2600 and 5200 versions, Peter travels at a slower, more reasonable speed of about 4.0 mph. This is not very surprising, given that a common complaint of the Atari 2600 version is that it is "slow". Finally, all the exercise that Peter got in the earlier versions of the game, paid off because in the GameBoy version he runs up those ladders at a blistering 7.8 mph.

After wandering down this rabbit hole, I was a bit surprised to realize that Peter Pepper travels a lot faster across the flat surfaces than up and down the ladder -- at least on the first level. In the Arcade version, he's moving over two times his vertical speed when moving horizontally. A whopping 12.0 mph! This is almost on pace with the world's best marathoners, who typically post speeds near 13.0 mph. The Atari versions also have a speed up, although not nearly so dramatic. In the Atari 2600 version his speed increases to 6.5 mph, and in the Atari 5200 version it increases to 7.2 mph. Interestingly, in the GameBoy version, Peter Pepper has the same horizontal and vertical speeds. Unless you are playing the GameBoy version, it is much better to try to outrun your enemies on flat ground than it is to try to outclimb them on the ladders.

It is worth noting that all of these speeds were calculated on the first level of each version, and Peter's speeds may change as he progresses further in his culinary career.

The line has always been long at Bartley's, but thankfully the wait is short. I like to think that somewhere in the back there's a olympian marathoner named Peter, scurrying around a 17 story rube goldberg tower of food, assembling the most monumental burgers in Harvard Square. Thankfully to generations of burger aficionados, Mr. Bartley found that miniaturization ray in Area 51 in the late 1950s so that we could enjoy Peter Pepper's magnificent creations in digestible dimensions.  

BurgerTime Cast of Characters: Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle, Mr. Egg, and the star himself, Peter Pepper. In the Atari 2600 version, Mr. Pickle was lost along with any decent graphics. In that version, Peter Pepper, aka the Chef, battles Hot Dogs, Eggs, Bread Sticks, and the dreaded Cheese. The Atari 5200 version introduces some colorful naming fun. Chef Pete squares off against Frank, the hot dog, Mr. Yolk, the egg, and Dr. Dill, the pickle. Burger Time Deluxe for the GameBoy returns to its arcade roots with Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle, and Mr. Egg reprising their roles as the original Food Foes. This image was captured from the arcade version running in MAME. 

Bonus Items and Extra Pepper: Proper pepper management is critical to success in BurgerTime. Peter Pepper will quickly find himself overwhelmed without any pepper shakers. Thankfully, after successfully luring several of the Food Foes onto falling burger parts, a bonus item will appear. Each bonus item gives Peter some bonus points and an additional pepper shaker. It's important to note that in the Arcade version the bonus items only appear for about 7 to 8 seconds. The Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and GameBoy versions all give you a little more time to replenish your stash of pepper shakers (17, 12 and 12 seconds, respectively). This image was captured from the arcade version running in MAME.

Alternate Versions

Game: BurgerTime
System: Atari 2600
Publisher: M Network
Year: 1982
Ranking: Two Quarters

The horror: The Atari 2600 version severely lacks the critical graphical elements seen in the other versions of BurgerTime. Seen at left is Mr."hip to be square" Egg. On the right we have a two new additions to the Food Foe team, Mr. "Flappy" Cheese (brown), and Mr. Breadstick. Only Mr. Hot Dog shows some semblance to his actually personna. Finally, it's worth noting that while the burger fixins are suspended from the scaffolding they are all an identical muddy yellow, but once they fall they become relatively recognizable burgers. This image was captured from the Atari 2600 version running in Stella. 

March of the breadsticks: Due to the flappy nature of Mr. Egg and Mr. Cheese, there comes a time when it appears that Peter Pepper is being pursued by a bunch of breadsticks. The key travesty in this image however, is the graphical representation of the first bonus item. In the arcade version the ice cream cone is the first bonus item. For the longest time I tried to reconcile the image of a burning bush above with an ice cream cone. In preparation for this blog, I realized that M Network changed the order and made French Fries as the bonus item on the first screen. A slightly better match to what is shown above, but not nearly as interesting as a flaming shrub. This image was captured from the Atari 2600 version running in Stella.

Game: Beef Drop
System: Atari 5200
Author: Ken Siders
Year: 2004
Ranking: Four Quarters

Progression of Peter Pepper: The Atari 5200 version does a significantly better job matching the arcade experience. The graphical elements are clear and obvious. Breadsticks and fluttering flags are gone and replaced with the customary anthropomorphised fast-food items. The game no longer pauses when Peter tosses his pepper, and the bonus items match the Arcade progression. Beef Drop for the Atari 5200 is a fantastically fun game that matches the arcade experience well. Image captured using a digital camera and an actual Atari 5200 hooked up to a CRT screen.

Game: Burger Time Deluxe
System: GameBoy
Publisher: Data East
Year: 1991
Ranking: Four Quarters

BurgerTime Evolution: The typical early 80s Arcade port evolution went as follows. Amazing game is introduced to the public at the local arcade. Groundbreaking game is decimated to run on the Atari 2600. Incremental progress is made to improve home game play on the Intellivision, Atari 5200, and NES while trying to hue as closely as possible to the original game. At some point, right around the GameBoy/SNES era a conscious effort is made to no longer match that original arcade, but expand upon the idea and make the game even better. BurgerTime Deluxe on the GameBoy follows this model. The first few levels match the arcade versions, and then the sky opens up. New bonus items become available and the game is fun and new all at the same time. One thing to watch out for in this version is that Food Foes don't respawn at the edge of the screen when the fall to the ground with a burger part, rather they wander around dazed for a few seconds and then quickly resume their hunt for Peter Pepper where the burger part has come to rest. Image captured using a digital camera and a GameBoy SP.

Useful Links

• BugerTime Strategy Guide (Arcade)
• Let's Compare BurgerTime
• BurgerTime Deluxe Manual (GameBoy)

Retro Game Rankings: No Quarters to Four Quarters. It should be noted, that although the going price of an arcade game was a single quarter when many of these games first came out, I feel that true retro game fans would be willing to pay a little bit more to capture the glory of playing some of the truly great ones one more time.

Retro Game Review -- Skiing (Atari 2600)

Game: Skiing

System: Atari 2600

Publisher: Activision

Year: 1980

Ranking: Three Quarters

December has arrived, and my thoughts turn towards winter. Well, the winters I used to know. I now live on the Gulf coast. The closest I come to winter in this hot, soupy climate is holding a polar punch snow cone. Luckily for me, I can rekindle frosty, alpine memories by firing up Activision's Skiing on my old Atari 2600. 

Activision's biggest claim to fame, well after the phenomenally popular Call of Duty series, is that it was the first third-party video game developer. Started back in 1979 by a group of disgruntled Atari employees, Activision quickly showed the world that hardware developers weren't the only ones who could make innovative, exciting, quality games. Activision rewarded and acknowledged their game designers. Lead programmers received royalties and their names were prominently displayed on the games. Activision even went so far as to turn over a full page of the manual to the lead programmer. This portion of the manual often provided helpful tips or interesting insights into the development of the game. Bob Whitehead, lead designer of Skiing, offered the following advice:

The keys to success in Skiing by ACTIVISION, just as in real skiing, are learning to control the tips of your skis and anticipating and avoiding trouble.

Activision innovated in other ways as well. Today we take PlayStation's trophies and XBox's achievements as ordinary and expected. If I don't get a bronze trophy for completing the first mission in a modern game, I feel dissatisfied and let down. It makes me wonder why I even bought the game. Back in the early 1980s, however, accolades like these were only possible on the high-score screens at the local arcade. There were multiple reasons for this. First, the games themselves did not have the memory to store extraneous, non-game code. Second, and more importantly, there was no internet to verify and broadcast your accomplishments. If you were going to tell the world of a serious feat, you needed another method. Enter the Activision patch.

The Activision patch was a simple idea. Gamers who achieved certain in game goals for select titles could take a picture on film (!?) of their accomplishment and then snail mail it to Activision. Activision would then "verify" the accomplishment and send the gamer an achievement patch. In the case of Skiing, posting a score of 28.2 seconds or less on game three would qualify you to become a member of the Activision ski team. As a kid, I was completely unaware of Activision patches. After returning to the Atari 2600 years later and hearing about this promotion, my mind was blown that any video game company would do something like this. But, I suppose this was the era when cereal and Cracker Jack boxes came with honest to goodness toys, so a patch doesn't sound like that much of a stretch given the time period. 

Skiing offers two types of courses: downhill and slalom. In downhill you race downhill as fast as possible while avoiding obstacles. In slalom you navigate your way through a series of gates in the least amount of time. Game 3, the patch qualifying game, is a slalom course. Each of the 30 gates must be hit at expert speed. Miss a gate and take a 5 second penalty. Hit a flag or a tree and take a second or two to get up. Take a wide turn, and you might as well head right into the shower after your run because you're not making the podium. The first time I tried this event, it took me about 43 seconds. I was pretty sure getting to 28.2 seconds was going to be impossible. 

It turns out I was wrong. The key is to first memorize the course and then follow these three steps: 

1. Make every gate,
2. Always keep skis pointed straight down, and
3. Use the absolute minimum amount of left and right movement to make it through all the gates.

Step one is easy and will likely get you into the 30-35 second range. Step two is more difficult and will have you finishing in the 23-25 second range. The third step is the most tricky and takes the most time to master. My qualifying video is attached below to show exactly how I did it. My final time came in at a blistering 28.17 seconds. My knuckles are still white from gripping the joystick.

Skiing is a simple game. There's not a lot of bells and whistles. The only sound effects are "whoosh" as you fly through a gate, and "crunch" as you hit a tree or gate post. Graphics are sparse, but colorful. The red skier, green trees, and blue gates all stand out from the snowy mountain. Controls are crisp. I always knew that it was my fault when I missed a gate. Skiing might not be the greatest game on the Atari 2600, but it sure is moguls of fun.

Activision's Skiing for the Atari 2600: you can tell that you are at fairly high elevation given the relatively diminutive size of the trees compared to your skier.  

My qualifying run on Game 3. 

I'm legit! My official Activision Ski Team patch arrived today! Now I just need to decide if I should put it on my Jansport backpack or my foam and mesh ball cap. 

Retro Game Rankings: No Quarters to Four Quarters. It should be noted, that although the going price of an arcade game was a single quarter when many of these games first came out, I feel that true retro game fans would be willing to pay a little bit more to capture the glory of playing some of the truly great ones one more time.

Retro Game Review -- Yars' Revenge (Atari 2600)

Game: Yars' Revenge

System: Atari 2600

Publisher: Atari

Year: 1982

Ranking: Three Quarters

Yars' Revenge summons up memories of visiting my cousins. When I was young, someone once told me they lived in an old whaling captain's house. The house was large and square and rose from a high hill. Stone terraces ringed it like breakers at the beach. The top floor was a tiny square room wrapped in windows. Presumably, this was where the captain's wife watched and waited for her husband to return. I didn't see it. First, the house was miles away from any body of water. Second, it was surrounded by massive trees, limiting all views. Finally, not once did my cousins or I ever find an old harpoon, a decorative piece of scrimshaw, or a massive whale mandible out in the backyard while making delicious mud pies. My confusion about the origin and nature of the house extended to one of my older cousin's favorite games, Yar's Revenge. Eight year old me had absolutely no idea what was going on in this bizarre, unique game.

Year's later, shortly after my Aunt and Uncle sold the house and moved into a more modest, conventional home, I reintroduced myself to Atari games. A quick Google search quickly revealed the greatest Atari 2600 game of all time to be Yar's Revenge. As someone who tends to go with the flow, I found a copy, slid it into my console, and was just as lost as I was when I was eight. Thankfully this time around I was armed with the power of the internet. I studied the manual, read the comic book, and listened along with the storybook record. It was only then that I returned to the game with the singular goal of defeating the ruthless Qotile and avenging the destruction of Planet IV!

The premise is simple. You are a Yar. Your goal is to destroy the Qotile. Protecting the Qotile is a magic, er, destroyer missile and a red shield. The destroyer missile relentlessly follows you across the screen until you are, well for lack of a better term, destroyed. The only place safe from the destroyer missile is within the colorful spectrum of the neutral zone. The destroyer missile will not be able to damage you, nor will you be able to fire your own weapons at the shield and Qotile while you remain in the neutral zone. When the game starts, the red shield is in a static configuration around the Qotile. You'll need to disintegrate the shield block by block to get at the Qotile by either firing your weapon or eating through it with your Yar. Occasionally the Qotile will transform into a Yar seeking Swirl. Avoid the Swirl or loose a life.

These are the easy, self-evident bits.The confusion starts after you have blasted away the shield. No matter how may times you shoot the Qotile with your energy missiles, they do nothing. Dollar store safety goggles will have a better chance of protecting your eyes from a tsunami of radioactive waste, then your pea cannon will have hurting the powerful Qotile. This is where I would get stuck as a kid. Obviously you don't want to touch the Qotile. Nor was I stupid enough to try to eat through the shield. Staying that long in one place was a sure fire way for the destroyer missile to zap you out of existence. Unfortunately, both of these counterintuitive actions are how you arm the pulsing, scintillating Zorlon cannon. After arming, the cannon appears on the left hand side of the screen, and will track your Yar's motion up and down the battlefield. Your Yar has become the targeting computer for the powerful cannon. To fire activate, arm, and then hit the fire button. Beware, however, because the Zorlon cannon will destroy everything in it's path, including your Yar. For big points hit the Swirl while it is flying towards you. After destroying the Qotile you move on to level two, where the destroyer missile speeds up a bit and the shield now dynamically rotates around the the Qotile. From this point on the shield will rotate between static and dynamic configurations.

While the game is certainly not as intuitive as Pac-Man, it is colorful, complex, and fun. I'll go against the grain and say this isn't my all-time, number one favorite, but it's still a good game. The only mysteries that remain for me these days are how the heck did a whaling house get so far inland and why the fruit doesn't Qotile have a "u"?

Yar's Revenge: attacking the Qotile's shield. The destroyer missile can be seen making it's way toward the Yar on the lefthand side of the screen. The iconic neutral zone wraps across the center of the screen.

Yar's Revenge: the Swirl attacks! The destroyer missile has also changed to an angry hue of red.

Yar's Revenge: the Yar has succeed in destroying the Qotile. The black line on the very far right of the screen is presumably the "Ghost of Yars".

Post-script: When writing each blog, I first play the game a few times to summon back the foggy memories of youth. I then throw together a straw house of words and hope it sounds vaguely interesting. The next step is to go back to the game and get some interesting screen shots. I finish it off with a round of final editing. A funny thing happened when capturing the screen shots this time around: I FOUND THE EASTER EGG! 

Okay, I know what you're thinking. Big deal. If you go to the Wikipedia article, it "clearly" states how to get the Easter Egg. An excerpt:

After killing the Swirl in mid-air, a black vertical line will appear on the screen across the spot where the Swirl was shot (the line is referred to in the manual as the "Ghost of Yars" and warns the player to stay off its "mean streak"). If the player moves vertically along that line and is slightly below the middle of the screen when the explosion closes, the game will end and go into the Game Select screen with programmer's initials, HSW, shown both forwards and backwards in place of the word Select.

When I read this, my eyes glazed over, and I skipped ahead to the next paragraph. In all my playing, I never once noticed a vertical black line, and even if I did, I wouldn't ever be able to keep my Yar on it. I'm just not that precise. Well, lo and behold, the first time I hit a Swirl mid-air, I trigger the Easter Egg. Seriously, I couldn't have gotten this if I tried. This might be the first time I've ever found an Easter Egg accidentally. Here it is screenshot in all its 8-bit glory:

Yar's Revenge Easter Egg screen. This was achieved the old-fashion way: dumb luck.

Retro Game Rankings: No Quarters to Four Quarters. It should be noted, that although the going price of an arcade game was a single quarter when many of these games first came out, I feel that true retro game fans would be willing to pay a little bit more to capture the glory of playing some of the truly great ones one more time.

Retro Game Review -- E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600)

Game: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

System: Atari 2600

Publisher: Atari

Year:1982

Ranking: Two Quarters

Like many young Atari owners in the early 1980s, I remember getting E.T. for Christmas. I was pretty young when the movie was released and only had a vague awareness of its immense cultural impact. I was, however, smart enough to recognize a wrapped Atari game under the Christmas tree, and I most assuredly tore it open with reckless abandon. As soon as my mother deemed it socially acceptable, it was in my wood-grained Atari and I was off to the races. Well, actually, I was off to the bottom of an endless torment of pits.

What is up with all those pits? I don't remember pits being an essential element of the movie. In the video game, poor little E.T. falls into them faster than Boba Fett getting sucked into the Sarlacc Pit. The worst part was that you had to deliberately fall into these death traps in order to beat the game. Hidden at the bottom of a very select few of these pits were the three pieces to E.T.'s transgalactic telephone that he needed to call home. Surprisingly, the 11 page manual fails to explain how the pieces ended up in the pits. I like to think that it was because E.T. smashed his phone to pieces after his buddies left the planet screaming, "Dear, God, why did you leave me in this game?"

It has probably been commented on many times before, but it is ironic that one of the most enduring myths about this game is that millions of unsold copies ended up IN A PIT in New Mexico. The story goes that E.T. was so bad that it single handily brought down the entire video game industry. The correlation equal causation argument runs that prior to E.T.'s release, North American video game revenues were $3.2 BILLION. Less than two years after E.T.'s release, revenues had plummeted to $100 MILLON. Things were so bad that rather than sell E.T. for pennies on the dollar, Atari thought it was a better idea to bury the millions of unsold copies. It's a tall tale for a short alien.

Over the years, classic gamers loved debating the veracity of the myth like two teenagers playing Pong at a bar in the early seventies. If it wasn't for Fuel Entertainment, it is likely that the debate would still be going on today. Partnering with XBox Entertainment Studios and Lightbox, Fuel Entertainment set out to reveal the truth behind the myth. They would find the site, excavate the pit, and document the experience. After a protracted approval process, they received permission from the city of Alamogordo, NM to dig at alleged burial site site on April 26, 2014. In the presence of many luminaries, including Ernie Cline, writer of Ready Player One, and Howard Scott Warshaw, creator of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, they uncovered the truth. Ernie's blog entry is a great first-person account of the event.

It turns out that for all these years E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial was indeed buried in a pit. Major news outlets declared, "Myth confirmed!". Alas, the subtleties of actual facts were once again lost on the mainstream media. While E.T. was buried in the pit many, many more games were buried alongside the lovable little alien. These titles included Adventure, Star Raiders, Ms. Pac-man, Space Invaders, and Yar's Revenge, arguably the most critically acclaimed game for the Atari 2600. E.T. wasn't even the most plentiful game. Copies of Defender, a blockbuster seller at the time, far outnumbered E.T. It appears that rather than covering up a singular critical flop, Atari was trying to pull the reset switch on their company console and start the game over again.

At the time of the burial, Atari was in a hard spot. The floor had fallen out of the video game market, and they were sitting on warehouses of games that nobody seemed to care about or even want. In order to cut their losses, the sharp business folks at Atari felt it would be a good idea to close extraneous warehouses and dump the goods in landfills. Alamogordo was the final resting place for the products from the El Paso, TX warehouse. Odds are likely that there could be other, unknown, Atari graveyards scattered across the United States. If we, like the intrepid extra-terrestrial in the video game, were only to fling ourselves in pit after pit across this great country, we too might just discover some long forgotten retro-game treasure.

Personally, for all my antagonism towards the pits, I do not think that E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial single handedly brought down the video game industry of North America, nor do I think that E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is an especially bad game. I fondly remember the colorful, vibrant graphics and the pitter-patter of E.T.'s feet as he shuffled across the screen. The difficulty range was large and selectable. At the easiest setting any player that can spot the true-blue alien hiding in a pile of stuffed animals can succeed. On the other hand, I suspect you'll need the intelligence of HAL to beat the most difficult setting. In the middle, is a Goldilocks zone, where with perseverance and profanity, you can save little E.T. from the terrifying NASA scientists. At least for a time...

And that gets to the true tragedy of this game. After dodging thieving F.B.I. agents, fleeing probing scientists, levitating out of a moon's worth of craters, and collecting all the telephone pieces you are gratefully picked up by your extra-terrestrial friends and carried off to your adoring family. Or so you had hoped. Horrifically, rather than taking you home, your bastard friends drop you off in that same pit-infested wood around that nice boy Elliot's house to do it again, and again, and again...

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial "completed" game screen: back at Elliott's home. 

Retro Game Rankings: No Quarters to Four Quarters. It should be noted, that although the going price of an arcade game was a single quarter when many of these games first came out, I feel that true retro game fans would be willing to pay a little bit more to capture the glory of playing some of the truly great ones one more time.

Retro Game Review -- Midnight Magic (Atari 2600)

Game: Midnight Magic

System: Atari 2600

Publisher: Atari

Copyright Year: 1984
Released: 1986

Ranking: Three Quarters

When I say, Midnight Magic, the first thought that comes to your mind is probably not "video game", "pinball", nor "Atari 2600". In fact, a quick google search of the expression will link you to the band Midnight Magic. They describe themselves as:

A nine person ensemble bonded by the unwavering desire to make you, the listener, and the rhythm become one; the secret love children of Donna Summer and George Clinton serving up an orgasmic feast of funk, disco, electro and soul.

That's probably closer to the mark.

Despite this branding blunder by Atari, Midnight Magic is in fact an early video pinball game. Midnight Magic was Atari's second video pinball title. Atari's first foray into video pinball came in 1978 when they created a dedicated video pinball home console. Video Pinball included three game types: the eponymous pinball, breakout, and basketball. All three game types would later be released as cartridges for the Atari 2600. While Video Pinball attempted to capture the mechanics of real-world pinball machines, the horizontal orientation of the game screen and wonky physics failed to translate into a realistic simulation.

Midnight Magic was a more mature attempt to simulate real-world pinball machines for the home. The plunger is marked off at regular intervals, so that you can more reliably and consistently launch the ball onto the board to light up the central bumpers, raise the center post, and activate the side kickers. To do all this, you have to hit the indicated drop-target at the top of the board. Failure to do this when launching the ball can cost serious amounts of points. Lit bumpers are worth a whopping 1,000 points. Unlit bumpers are worth a measly 100 points. The center post is also critical to raise. Balls seem to gravitate towards the gaping maw between the lower flippers. Having a raised center post opens up the opportunity for you to perform the eminently cool "chill maneuver". In this technique, you don't use the flippers to stop the ball from going out of play. You simply stand firm and let the ball whiz past the flippers, hit the center post, and bounce back on to the playing field. The maneuver requires nerves of steel, but is necessary to master in order to stay alive long enough to hit all the drop-targets and get the point multipliers. Skilled players will be able to get up to 5x point multipliers.

Midnight Magic is addictive. It saves your in game high score, so you can compete with yourself or your friends to see who can get the highest score in a given session. The drop-targets and point multipliers provide fantastic goals to make the game more exciting. I feel like a complete failure if I don't make at least the 2x point multiplier in a sitting. The game lacks the same level of skill as an actual pinball machine, but there's enough realism to make it enjoyable.

Although Midnight Magic was copyrighted in 1984, it wasn't released until 1986. Like Gremlins for the Atari 5200 (see Retro Game Review -- Gremlins), it's official release was delayed due to the video game crash of 1983. After seeing the success of the NES release in 1985, Atari tried to redirect some of the renewed video game excitement back to their most famous system. Unfortunately, this meant that Midnight Magic was released more than a year after Pinball came out for the NES. Pinball, one of the original 18 launch titles for the NES, had colorful graphics, big sprites, and a scrolling game board. It's a significantly more impressive piece of software and puts Midnight Magic to shame. Maybe it's not fair to compare across platforms, but as a 10 year old boy, I was very sad to be playing Midnight Magic when I knew Pinball for the NES was out there. Now that I'm an old man, I'm just glad that I can play them all.

Midnight Magic for Atari 2600: Starting color.

Midnight Magic for Atari 2600: 2x point multiplier activated. The 2x point multiplier is activated when all the drop-targets at the top have been hit. Flashing colors and a brief musical number announce the multipliers activation.  

Retro Game Rankings: No Quarters to Four Quarters. It should be noted, that although the going price of an arcade game was a single quarter when many of these games first came out, I feel that true retro game fans would be willing to pay a little bit more to capture the glory of playing some of the truly great ones one more time. More reviews can be found here: Retro Game Reviews.

Retro Game Review -- LadyBug (Atari 2600)

Game: Lady Bug

System: Atari 2600

Publisher: John W. Champeau (Homebrew)

Year: 2006

Ranking: Four Quarters

"Two-thousand and six!", you exclaim. "But I thought the Atari 2600 died at the hands of a pudgy Italian plumber back in 1985?" 

The longevity of the 2600 is truly surprising. Atari continued to produce, market, and sell the Atari 2600 until 1992, 7 long years after Super Mario and the NES were launched in the US. The last Atari 2600 unit shipped nearly 15 years after the first one rolled out of the factories. Although it may not have been the dominant video game system during that entire time, it developed a passionate following. Once the Atari 2600 factories, such as they were, were retooled for the "superior" 16-bit generation, fans could only look to themselves to continue the development of new titles. Like the prohibition era moonshiners before them, Atari fans around the world took to their studies, basements, and attics to homebrew a new line of titles. Luckily for us, homebrewing Atari titles is less Bonnie and Clyde and more Lady Bug and Master Chief. 

Homebrew titles come in a variety of flavors. There is a subset that aims to improve tragic, original Atari 2600 releases. The best example of this is Pac-Man 4K by Dennis Debro. This title shows that the original Pac-Man for the 2600 did not have to be a flickering barf-fest. Another category of homebrews aims to bring a completely new game to 2600 fans. In Duck Attack! by Will Nicholes, the player must collect radioactive eggs laid by enormous, mutant, and fire-breathing ducks to prevent a mad scientist from using them to create a doomsday device. Finally, there is a subset of homebrews that takes popular titles of the era that were originally released on other home systems and brings them to the 2600 for the first time. Lady Bug, released for both Intellivision and ColecoVision and ported to the Atari 2600 in 2006 by John W. Champeau, fits into this category.

Lady Bug is a complex game. You control a mild-mannered Lady Bug. Your goal is to eat the delectable flowers that line the garden paths. Sharing the garden with you are several disagreeable bugs. At the start of the game, the inhospitable insects are corralled in the center of the board. A green timer runs along the edge of the board. Once the timer completes a cycle, one of the viscous vermin is released and it starts to chase you through the maze. Up to four insects can chase you. When they are all out, you'll have an opportunity to storm their bunker and eat one of their delicious high-scoring vegetables. As you run though the maze, you'll have the opportunity to open and close the many green garden gates to delay your enemies. If you flip the doors at the right time, you can drive the insects into one of the two death skulls to instantaneously vaporize them. The flipping doors create a dynamic and exciting game board. A smart Lady Bug will take advantage of this to stay one step ahead of trouble.

In addition to the delicious flowers, there are also hearts and letters that you can collect for points and bonuses. During the course of the game, the hearts and letters cycle through three colors: blue, yellow, and red. Collect blue hearts and get point multipliers. Snatch yellow letters to spell the word EXTRA and get an extra life and a bonus cut scene. Finally gather all the red letters to spell the word SPECIAL and you will be transported to a special stage containing only the coveted high-scoring vegetables. The special stage is where your score grows to magical beanstalk heights. As far as I've been able to tell, the letters appear randomly, so you'll have to have patience my young grasshopper, er, lady bug, to collect the bonus words.

I love Lady Bug. It's exciting, fun, and it makes you think. I am amazed that Champeau managed to create such a remarkable port on the limited 2600 hardware. Playing a fantastic homebrew like Lady Bug is inspiring. It makes me think that if I put my mind to it, I could go out and create something new for the system that kindled my love of video games. It's a bit of a stretch, but, hey, it's important to dream.

Start of Lady Bug for the Atari 2600.

Extra life cut sequence: Lady Bug dances a little jig around the screen.

Death for Lady Bug: at least it looks like she's on her way to a better place.

Retro Game Rankings: No Quarters to Four Quarters. It should be noted, that although the going price of an arcade game was a single quarter when many of these games first came out, I feel that true retro game fans would be willing to pay a little bit more to capture the glory of playing some of the truly great ones one more time.

Retro Game Reviews

Game	System	Ranking
Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom	Atari 5200
Burger Drop	Atari 5200
BurgerTime	Arcade
BurgerTime	Atari 2600
BurgerTime Deluxe	GameBoy
Darkwing Duck	GameBoy
Eggomania	Atari 2600
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial	Atari 2600
Gremlins	Atari 5200
Lady Bug	Atari 2600
Mario Bros.	Atari 5200
Midnight Magic	Atari 2600
Missle Command	Atari 5200
Moon Patrol	Atari 5200
Pole Position	Atari 5200
Qix	Atari 5200
River Raid	Atari 5200
River Raid	Atari 2600
Skiing	Atari 2600
Yar's Revenge	Atari 2600
Zaxxon	Atari 5200

Retro Game Rankings: No Quarters to Four Quarters. It should be noted, that although the going price of an arcade game was a single quarter when many of these games first came out, I feel that true retro game fans would be willing to pay a little bit more to capture the glory of playing some of the truly great ones one more time.