Intellivision HSC Season 17 - Game 5 - BurgerTime

[Rickster8]

46 minutes ago, wongojack said:

I played a little more tonight.  I was hoping for a breakthrough, but I didn't get one.  I didn't take a photo, but my score was only a slight increase from my last post at 50,700.

 

There's always been something about this game that just seemed a little bit unfun to me.  I don't really get into the idea of making burgers to begin with.  The game is cute and from a game design point of view the concept has depth and is solid, but I NEVER get excited about playing as a burger chef.  Anyway, that's my problem not the game.  I've now played this for a few hours with you guys and I have a handful of gripes that make me want to reset or stop playing rather than have another go and they are (in order of annoyance)

 

#3 - Probably my fault, but I can't figure out when the guys spawn on top of a bun and when they span from the edges.  Means I get killed by a suddenly spawning enemy, and even if this is my fault because I haven't bothered to learn the rules, it still sucks when I'm headed across a burger and get surprised

#2 - The already mentioned disappearing pepper prize.  It's on the screen waaay too short a time

#1 - The least fun thing is that I'd say between 10 and 20% of the time, the pepper just doesn't come out.  You press the button and you just die.  This simply CANNOT happen.  It sucks

 

I also have never seen all the guys bunched on top of themselves allowing you to drop them all for 8000.  I've played the game for hours, so it must be some kind of points pressing trick which I get is fun for some people, but I don't really get into that kind of thing.

 

Anyway, I might play a bit more to see if something clicks, but not being able to count on my pepper really sucks.

Yeah I hear ya on all this. The worst is when you die and lose a pepper. It's like REALLY? What's the point? Unfortunately you have the be REALLY patient with this game and know where to position the chef so the baddies travel in such a path that they end up super duper close or on top of each other. You have to play this goofy game for awhile to learn how to do this with little effort. For some people who are REALLY good at this they know the 'art' of getting the baddies to travel exactly where they want them to go so they end up on top of each other so you can drop them all right quick. I have also never gotten an 8k drop. I'm just not patient enough or savvy enough to get all 5 of them to line up in such a way to do this.... I didn't have this game as a kid so I've had to learn it on the fly here. Like you I'm not a huge fan of the 'foodie' games, I'd much rather shoot the hell outta something... I've gotten better at this game, but I will never be GREAT at it... Oh well....  

 

PS - I could be wrong, but I think they respawn from the sides when you smush them with food.... When you give them a ride on food they climb back up..... amirite??? 😜

Edited August 30, 2022 by Rickster8
Wording

[fakecortex]

4 minutes ago, Rickster8 said:

PS - I could be wrong, but I think they respawn from the sides when you smush them with food.... When you give them a ride on food they climb back up..... amirite??? 😜

Yup, I think that’s the ticket. 

 

@wongojack I also hear ya on these points, yet still, I love it (and this version in particular). And for me, I love the theme of the game. Weird stuff like this has always interested me more lol. I mean, I have no desire to be an actual burger chef (especially if I had to fight off giant pickles and such). 

 

Re:

 

#3) see above 

#2) agreed. If you don’t time it or just stumble upon it, it’s a goner. 

#1) I don’t wanna talk about it hahaha. Yeah, I feel like you have to be so careful and even then, ugh. But other times I’m on a roll and everything’s good. On a roll, hahaha. 

[IntellivisionMaster]

@wongojack I owe you tips on Burgertime since you really helped me get out of the basement on Pinball!
 

If you “take the food on a ride”, they Re-Spawn from under the bun. If you squash a food, it Re-spawns from one of the 4 corners of the screen. When you pray that it doesn’t come out exactly where you’re standing, it comes out there every time. LOL 😂. In order to get the 4K and 8k bonuses, you have to take the time to group the food all together and take them all on a ride. You’re better off seeing a bunch of 3 and trying to add one more… or a bunch of 2 and add one more then take them all on a ride. Trying to get them all will lead to a ton of frustration and loss of men  wait to get much better before maxing the grouping. Re the prizes, they come out every few bun-drops. So if it’s been a few drops and it hadn’t come out yet… then it’s coming very soon; like one of the next 2 bun-drops. Time yourself to eat a bun then grab the prize while the coast is clear near the prize!  Very often I use a pepper to get a pepper. It sounds useless but you get $500 and you can yell “YESSSS I GOT THE PRIZE” and use that positive momentum to keep going!  Re using peppers…. It IS a skill. Don’t take it for granted. You need to be facing the guy and hit that Inty button as hard as you can to make sure you hit him. It sprays the pepper in the direction THAT WAS LAST PRESSED by you on the disc. NOT where the chef is facing. 
 

That’s all I got! Apart from that, practice practice practice … makes you better at BT! 

Edited August 30, 2022 by IntellivisionMaster

[IntellivisionMaster]

325,850

 

Disc Level - Single green dot

 

I was supposed to wait until Friday but couldn’t help it. I’m addicted to BT so it’s very difficult to not play. I was much better on this game but lost all my men and peppers on the last 2 screens; so almost pointless that I did much better! Until Friday! 

[crade]

1 hour ago, wongojack said:

I played a little more tonight.  I was hoping for a breakthrough, but I didn't get one.  I didn't take a photo, but my score was only a slight increase from my last post at 50,700.

 

There's always been something about this game that just seemed a little bit unfun to me.  I don't really get into the idea of making burgers to begin with.  The game is cute and from a game design point of view the concept has depth and is solid, but I NEVER get excited about playing as a burger chef.  Anyway, that's my problem not the game.  I've now played this for a few hours with you guys and I have a handful of gripes that make me want to reset or stop playing rather than have another go and they are (in order of annoyance)

 

#3 - Probably my fault, but I can't figure out when the guys spawn on top of a bun and when they span from the edges.  Means I get killed by a suddenly spawning enemy, and even if this is my fault because I haven't bothered to learn the rules, it still sucks when I'm headed across a burger and get surprised

#2 - The already mentioned disappearing pepper prize.  It's on the screen waaay too short a time

#1 - The least fun thing is that I'd say between 10 and 20% of the time, the pepper just doesn't come out.  You press the button and you just die.  This simply CANNOT happen.  It sucks

 

I also have never seen all the guys bunched on top of themselves allowing you to drop them all for 8000.  I've played the game for hours, so it must be some kind of points pressing trick which I get is fun for some people, but I don't really get into that kind of thing.

 

Anyway, I might play a bit more to see if something clicks, but not being able to count on my pepper really sucks.

This is one of my favorite games, my gripe unfortunately is the same as with a lot of them, I feel like it's pushing me to just get into memorizing patterns. When you seem to do everything "just right" off the start of a level it's tough not to just do those exact same motions every time and if I give in and start looking for the patterns and doing it identically every time it's no fun

[gavvv]

9 hours ago, Rickster8 said:

Yeah I hear ya on all this. The worst is when you die and lose a pepper. It's like REALLY? What's the point? Unfortunately you have the be REALLY patient with this game and know where to position the chef so the baddies travel in such a path that they end up super duper close or on top of each other. You have to play this goofy game for awhile to learn how to do this with little effort. For some people who are REALLY good at this they know the 'art' of getting the baddies to travel exactly where they want them to go so they end up on top of each other so you can drop them all right quick. I have also never gotten an 8k drop. I'm just not patient enough or savvy enough to get all 5 of them to line up in such a way to do this.... I didn't have this game as a kid so I've had to learn it on the fly here. Like you I'm not a huge fan of the 'foodie' games, I'd much rather shoot the hell outta something... I've gotten better at this game, but I will never be GREAT at it... Oh well....  

 

PS - I could be wrong, but I think they respawn from the sides when you smush them with food.... When you give them a ride on food they climb back up..... amirite??? 😜

If you watch any of my BT vids, you'd see that it's not just beginners that have the worst with losing a life as you use a pepper (especially hitting pepper when you're too close to the baddie and the pepper cloud goes *behind* them) oof.  i still probably do that at least 2-3 times per game unfortunately.  Probably some primal instinct that tells the hindbrain that life is worth more than pepper :)...i was watching my 626k game a couple days ago and after board 4 i had 292k, 25 lives, and 6 peppers... in the arcade version you can use peppers to easily group enemies whereas that technique does not work on Inty.  Also, if you're on a board too long and the baddies start to speed up, if it's too much to handle without wasting ingredients, it's can be useful to sacrifice a life to reset the speed and gather yourself.

9 hours ago, IntellivisionMaster said:

@wongojack I owe you tips on Burgertime since you really helped me get out of the basement on Pinball!
 

If you “take the food on a ride”, they Re-Spawn from under the bun. If you squash a food, it Re-spawns from one of the 4 corners of the screen. When you pray that it doesn’t come out exactly where you’re standing, it comes out there every time. LOL 😂. In order to get the 4K and 8k bonuses, you have to take the time to group the food all together and take them all on a ride. You’re better off seeing a bunch of 3 and trying to add one more… or a bunch of 2 and add one more then take them all on a ride. Trying to get them all will lead to a ton of frustration and loss of men  wait to get much better before maxing the grouping. Re the prizes, they come out every few bun-drops. So if it’s been a few drops and it hadn’t come out yet… then it’s coming very soon; like one of the next 2 bun-drops. Time yourself to eat a bun then grab the prize while the coast is clear near the prize!  Very often I use a pepper to get a pepper. It sounds useless but you get $500 and you can yell “YESSSS I GOT THE PRIZE” and use that positive momentum to keep going!  Re using peppers…. It IS a skill. Don’t take it for granted. You need to be facing the guy and hit that Inty button as hard as you can to make sure you hit him. It sprays the pepper in the direction THAT WAS LAST PRESSED by you on the disc. NOT where the chef is facing. 
 

That’s all I got! Apart from that, practice practice practice … makes you better at BT! 

 

Every 4 pieces make it to the bottom spawns the bonus pepper so it works to try and drop the pieces in the order you want to get you as close to the spawn point as possible.  For example on board 1, clear the full 3 burger in the middle, then the bottom bun on the right (or 2 or 3 on the left or right burger, then the final 1 or 2 from the middle burger to complete a group of 4) .  

  All 8k drops (essentially) are a matter of knowing and seeing paths in the ladders , getting all 5 baddies to be following in a line, and then cluster them closer by making the front of the line take a longer route.  Board 5 has many routes vertically and horizontally that can be used for this purpose.  Again referring to my 626k game the other day, I noted on that one board alone, i made the 8000pt drop 13 times, by far the best i've done. (watching the vid i was saying man i so did not play boards 1-3 well at all, how did i get that score? ohhh that's how)

  Also key is not wasting pieces by dropping them empty or dropping them onto other pieces.  Example if a bun is 3 levels up, it can be dropped with baddies 2 times before it goes to the bottom.  If you run it over (even to squish something below), you'll lose one of those drop opportunities.  That 3 level bun can be worth 16,200 pts 

  Another minor tip, if you drop all or most of the baddies, and there is a ladder directly in the middle of the levels above that bun, it's good to stand on the ladder.  The spawning baddies from below will split and wrap around and be much more tightly grouped together than if you are much to the left or right of them.

 

 

 

[gar0u]

I played SO much Burgertime watching Night Tracks (music videos) on Friday nights, then later just mTV in general.

 

Pepper is like grenades.  (Don't die with any grenades--use them!).

 

I'm plagued by controller issues this season.  Despite my best efforts to not only submit a score for each game, but post a good score for my favorite games (and they're all my favorites this season), I'm spending way more time fighting RetroPie and jzintv keyboard hack files than playing games.  I have all these on cartridge, but don't often set up my original hardware.

 

Great to see all the competition this season!

[mr_me]

2 hours ago, gavvv said:

If you watch any of my BT vids, you'd see that it's not just beginners that have the worst with losing a life as you use a pepper (especially hitting pepper when you're too close to the baddie and the pepper cloud goes *behind* them) oof.  i still probably do that at least 2-3 times per game unfortunately.  Probably some primal instinct that tells the hindbrain that life is worth more than pepper :)...i was watching my 626k game a couple days ago and after board 4 i had 292k, 25 lives, and 6 peppers... in the arcade version you can use peppers to easily group enemies whereas that technique does not work on Inty.  Also, if you're on a board too long and the baddies start to speed up, if it's too much to handle without wasting ingredients, it's can be useful to sacrifice a life to reset the speed and gather yourself.

 

Every 4 pieces make it to the bottom spawns the bonus pepper so it works to try and drop the pieces in the order you want to get you as close to the spawn point as possible.  For example on board 1, clear the full 3 burger in the middle, then the bottom bun on the right (or 2 or 3 on the left or right burger, then the final 1 or 2 from the middle burger to complete a group of 4) .  

  All 8k drops (essentially) are a matter of knowing and seeing paths in the ladders , getting all 5 baddies to be following in a line, and then cluster them closer by making the front of the line take a longer route.  Board 5 has many routes vertically and horizontally that can be used for this purpose.  Again referring to my 626k game the other day, I noted on that one board alone, i made the 8000pt drop 13 times, by far the best i've done. (watching the vid i was saying man i so did not play boards 1-3 well at all, how did i get that score? ohhh that's how)

  Also key is not wasting pieces by dropping them empty or dropping them onto other pieces.  Example if a bun is 3 levels up, it can be dropped with baddies 2 times before it goes to the bottom.  If you run it over (even to squish something below), you'll lose one of those drop opportunities.  That 3 level bun can be worth 16,200 pts 

  Another minor tip, if you drop all or most of the baddies, and there is a ladder directly in the middle of the levels above that bun, it's good to stand on the ladder.  The spawning baddies from below will split and wrap around and be much more tightly grouped together than if you are much to the left or right of them.

 

 

 

I've always played this game making hamburgers from the top.  After seeing Gavv play, starting from the bottom is the way for high scores but it's not that easy.  I go the same distance, the same level, but with half the score.  And yes peppers are more valuable than lives.

[Rickster8]

21 minutes ago, mr_me said:

I've always played this game making hamburgers from the top.  After seeing Gavv play, starting from the bottom is the way for high scores but it's not that easy.  I go the same distance, the same level, but with half the score.  And yes peppers are more valuable than lives.

Hi mr_me... You gonna start throwing up some scores? We have Space Spartans coming up this season and we definitely need your excellence on that game...... 👍

 

@mr_me

Edited August 30, 2022 by Rickster8
Tagging

[gar0u]

When I played as a kid, I was way more focused on levels than score, much to the detriment of my performance on the HSC. 

 

Got my controller working for the time being, so here's my first entry.

 

 

[gar0u]

Burgertime's 40th birthday was last week!

 

The game was released for the Intellivision on August 25, 1982.

[Rickster8]

14 minutes ago, gar0u said:

Burgertime's 40th birthday was last week!

 

The game was released for the Intellivision on August 25, 1982.

Well look at that, completely unplanned HSC excellence....  

[wolfy62]

For me,I am happy with and will settle for: 68 950

[Rickster8]

33 minutes ago, wolfy62 said:

For me,I am happy with and will settle for: 68 950

Great progress Wolfy, the game's a real pain in the neck.... I'm stuck between the 70k - 80k range. I've played it like 5 times since my 84k and I get the same score virtually every time I play it. Always between 70k - 80k like clock work. I think I may try a few more times, try a couple different strategies and then I'm done FOR A LONG TIME!!!!  

Edited August 30, 2022 by Rickster8
Wording

[fakecortex]

The designers of level 7 must’ve been sadists. Trapped, everywhere I go! 

 

$60,400 😉 @IntellivisionMaster

[IntellivisionMaster]

Ryan makes me worse at this game! Always encouraging me to group more…. And I’m getting better but I lose a ton of men along the way because of it and I end my game 5 boards earlier with my same score  (lower even) it’s all good. 
 

No-where near my PB but my grouping skills are improving a lot! 
 

$357,700 

[crade]

67750

[Rickster8]

28 minutes ago, crade said:

67750

Nice one Crade. This is the Level where my little Boogie Chef goes to die. Never got past this Level and I can honestly say I probably never will. My Little Boogie Chef will just have to live with that....  

[crade]

9 minutes ago, Rickster8 said:

Nice one Crade. This is the Level where my little Boogie Chef goes to die. Never got past this Level and I can honestly say I probably never will. My Little Boogie Chef will just have to live with that....  

I have passed it before, but I basically need to save up all my lives and peppers and hope I last through it..  I was close on that run, one more live might have done it!

Edit: nevermind, would have needed 2 more at least

Edited August 31, 2022 by crade

[+wongojack]

I don't know if this has ever happened before (certainly not with a game as high profile as this), but I actually respect this game a lot LESS than before playing in the HS Club.  I think this is the last game of this version that I ever want to play.  61,400

 

The screen snip clipped the green dot, but I promise I was playing on disc speed.

[Rickster8]

Quick BurgerTime Update: 

 

 

501,300 - gavvv (+5 BONUS POINTS)

446,000 - IntellivisionMaster (+5 BONUS POINTS)

182,500 - IntyFanMatt (+4 BONUS POINTS)

170,450 - Player One (+4 BONUS POINTS)

  98,250 - cmadruga (+2 BONUS POINTS)

  84,150 - Rickster8 (+2 BONUS POINTS)

  70,650 - lupovax (+1 BONUS POINT)

  68,950 - wolfy62 (+1 BONUS POINT)

  67,750 - crade (+1 BONUS POINT)

  61,400 - wongojack (+1 BONUS POINT)

  60,400 - fakecortex (+1 BONUS POINT)

  34,700 - gar0u

  30,350 - jimblargh

 

Edited September 2, 2022 by Rickster8
Added in more scores.

[jimblargh]

30,350 pickles for me!

Disc level

I love Burger Time but I am also crazy busy, so participation points it is! 😆

 

[lupovax]

BURGERTIME - DISC LEVEL - 70,650

 

[IntellivisionMaster]

Almost there Ryan 😂

 

My 6th game after a 5-year break … it’s starting to come back to me:

 

$446,000 

 

Disc Level (Green Dot) 

Edited September 1, 2022 by IntellivisionMaster

[IntellivisionMaster]

Folks, after some contemplation, I’m leaving this score as my final score ….. To be continued another day…. Another time. 

Edited September 2, 2022 by IntellivisionMaster