Heavy Burger (Switch)

The idea of a video game crossover is an exciting one, but the form these crossovers usually take are either cameos made by a single character or the participating game franchises being thrown into a genre more conducive to a crossover. Seeing Mario and Sonic finally compete directly against each other like their parent companies had in the nineties might have been more exciting if they were embracing their platforming roots in a joint adventure, but instead they found themselves competing in the Olympics and fighting each other in Super Smash Bros.. Heavy Burger, also known as Johnny Turbo’s Arcade: Heavy Burger, certainly doesn’t bring any hard hitters like the faces of two of the biggest video game companies of all time to its crossover concept, but this utilization of Data East’s arcade properties hits on a creative idea for how to bring those franchises together.

 

In Heavy Burger, players find themselves playing as Peter Pepper, the hero of perhaps the most recognizable game featured in this crossover: BurgerTime. However, rather than building burgers like in his original game, Peter is now trying to grab a sack of cash and deliver it safely to the bank, but doing so requires him to run through areas that are contained inside other arcade cabinets. To complete a round of Heavy Burger a player must make it through the battlefield of Heavy Barrel, across the fighting arena from Karate Champ, through the food-filled world of BurgerTime, across the pool table from Side Pocket, through the mazes of Lock ‘N Chase, and finally reach the bank that just so happens to be positioned in the streets from the brawler Bad Dudes. While every game has been given an extra dash of chaos to make it more conducive to a multiplayer party game about running through various video game worlds, it often does feel like you’re an unexpected disruption to these worlds and bringing chaos with the gameplay you carry over with you.

Heavy Burger is actually a top down shooter at its heart, the player moving and aiming their gun wherever they face as Peter Pepper takes up firearms instead of pepper shakers this time around. Two to four players split into two teams compete to carry the cash bag to their own goal, each screen having an opening on both sides that serves as both an entrance and an exit. When you enter a new arcade cabinet you’ll pop in from one side and need to try and carry the cash safely to the other to pop over to the next 80s arcade game, but the other players can try to intercept by shooting you down. Every gunshot kills the moment it makes contact, meaning that the simple weapon you start with is still able to be effective with its steady firing rate and decent range. However, guns are scattered around the arenas you pass through, and while you only need one bullet to hit to make someone die and drop the cash bag, a shotgun will let you send out a spread of them, a machine gun lets you put out a bunch of shots quickly, and the laser gun will instantly zap anything ahead of it after it is charged up. You lose your weapons on death and revert to the default one when you quickly respawn, but death comes rapidly and constantly over the course of a game. Eliminating another player is not only good for making them drop the cash bag after all, since competing players will be briefly unable to stop your actions if they’re waiting to come back to life.

 

Heavy Burger makes sure to keep everything moving incredibly quickly. A dead player is never out of the action for long, but crossing a level doesn’t take too long either, especially if you utilize the dodge roll to get past dangers. Since most guns fire slightly slow bullets, that roll also gives you a means of avoiding incoming shots, the player able to avoid constant death if they can get the timing down right. Once a cash-carrying player does make it to the exit, you get a nice transition scene where you briefly see the arcade before you are thrown into the next arcade cabinet, the whole cabinet shifting process about as fast as it could be while still showing where you’re heading.

 

One of the most interesting aspects of progress in Heavy Burger though is how it manages to stick. When you start a round, you actually start in an original title invented for the game, this being the titular Heavy Burger. Here you just need to grab the cash bag as it spawns and get out, but characters from the other arcade games might escape the jail cells on screen to complicate it if the process takes to long. The thing is, once you’ve personally exited Heavy Burger with the cash bag, you do not need to ever clear it again. The other team still hasn’t “beat” Heavy Burger though, so if they grab the cash bag and escape from the arcade game the opposing team entered, they’ll be back at Heavy Burger and need to beat that to make progress towards their goal. Essentially, every team needs to successfully beat their half of the arcade, but if the cash bag is stolen, you won’t need to clear any levels on your side of the arcade when you get the money back.

The six arcade games featured in Heavy Burger may not be the most notable picks, Side Pocket especially a strange one to throw into the mix until you consider what they all bring to the table. You’re essentially running through an active arcade game, meaning in Side Pocket the billiard balls are all scattered around the arena and can be shot about to be rolling hazards. In BurgerTime’s level you need to avoid living food but can also shoot burger toppings at the top of the stage to drop them down towards the opposition. Heavy Barrel has you run through the crossfire chaos of a cliff side war zone, Karate Champ has an active tournament’s martial artists come in close to try and knock you away, and Bad Dudes’s main characters and boss enemy Karlov are out for the kill themselves in their stage. Each one feels unique because of the different idea their genres bring with them. BurgerTime can’t be a platformer in this game format but its enemies and dropping burger pieces are simple bothers while Heavy Barrel can be a frantic but delightful mess as it becomes hard to track bullets from both the game and your opponents. Lock ‘N Chase does feel like a bit of an odd game out though. It’s a maze game, a fine concept to throw into the mix, but the randomly generated layout often means you’re shooting down walls for a bit rather than fighting the other players or avoiding the somewhat plain enemies from the source game. It’s not bad per se, but the game’s energy does seem to wane a little in Lock ‘N Chase, and while BurgerTime can sometimes feel like it’s not bringing too much as an arena, it at least lets players constantly gun for each other the whole time they’re visiting.

 

Luckily, the game does let you customize which arcade cabinets must be cleared in a round of Heavy Burger. You’ll always start with Heavy Burger and end with Bad Dudes, but the cabinets in between can be swapped around and the number can even be lowered if you want snappier rounds. You can also do repeats, which is something featured in the single-player challenge mode a fair bit. Heavy Burger does work best as a zippy competition between friends as fortunes keep switching with every landed gunshot or shift to new arcade cabinet, so I won’t fault it too much for its unimaginative single-player options. The challenges are, essentially, just the game shifting the difficulty of AI players, the order you clear arcade cabinets, and which games are featured in the challenge. They don’t seem to have too much thought put into them besides thinking up different combos, and while AI opponents can put up a good fight, it’s not quite as fun as the raucous multiplayer fights for control as an arcade game is exploding around you since it wasn’t built for gunfights. However, if you complete the challenges, you can unlock little bits of history on the actual arcade games featured in Heavy Burger. Being able to see the games you’re running through in their original state is a nice touch, but the unlockables aren’t so interesting that you’ll feel you need to push through the harder challenges just to see them.

 

Last thing of note is definitely how surprisingly funny this game can be even for someone who hasn’t played any of the arcade games being referenced. In fact, sometimes not getting the reference makes it more hilarious. When you deliver the cash bag to the bank you’ll be thanked by the bank manager… Ronald Reagan, who then takes you to the white house to have a burger to celebrate. If you get the Bad Dudes reference it’s a fun callback, and if you don’t it’s just another inexplicably wild thing about this game that throws so many ideas together. Seeing bulls constantly running across the Karate Champ stage adds to the excitement of a stage based on a slow fighting game and when Karnov from Bad Dudes walks on screen, blows out a flame, and that flame comes to life as a burning man, you just have to laugh and accept the insanity that comes from hurling so many game properties together into this mad dash for cash. Heavy Burger itself brings some hilarity though with the death sounds of the playable characters, Peter Pepper making some ridiculous noises when shot that not only are good for a laugh, but make it very clear someone’s gone done. Hearing the goofy death screams over an already gloriously chaotic struggle make it so that Heavy Burger is a light-hearted blast even if you have no love for the old Data East games the action takes place in.

THE VERDICT: Heavy Burger’s premise of running through a bunch of 80s arcade games might sound like it only appeals to people who would recognize Data East’s less than famous selection of titles, but the manic chaos caused by throwing together all the elements of the six featured arcade games makes for a hilarious and energetic multiplayer experience. The supplied weapons are simple but effective so they’re easy to use well and the action remains quick thanks to fast respawns and shifts between arcade cabinets. Playing alone is a bit bland, but it’s the silly speedy gunfights in busy arcade-themed arenas that really give this multiplayer action game its winning flavor.

 

And so, I give Heavy Burger for Nintendo Switch…

A GOOD rating. A surprisingly creative concept realized wonderfully, Heavy Burger may not have heavy hitters to draw from, but it manages to make even a pool game serve as an exciting arena for its simple gun-focused combat. Lock ‘N Chase could have maybe used something to make navigating it less about shooting down walls, the game even seeming to realize this as the police-themed maze game makes sure to start a round by having the cops crash their cars through some of the barriers to open it up a little. However, there can be a good rise and fall with things like the very straightforward arrangement of BurgerTime’s mostly open area being a nice ease-in while Heavy Barrel is a chaotic ease-out near the end. Being able to swap cabinets around means you can always remove one if your player group isn’t particularly fond of it, but for the most part Heavy Burger brings a lot of excitement by being unafraid to embrace the gradual accumulation of chaotic elements the longer you spend in a stage. Players don’t gain too big of an advantage if they do manage to shoot each other dead thanks to quick respawns and the need to avoid the deadly enemies and hazards moving about even when there’s no other player there to oppose them. Aiming your guns well and trying to pick up better firearms do mean it’s not just about trying to survive the hectic arcade game elements, but the human element does feel pretty important to enjoying the game. Bots can provide good assistants if your player group isn’t big enough, but the solo challenges range from feeling like they lack energy because they’re too easy to being very hard to overcome. If you actually unlocked the featured arcade games to play as a reward then the single player would definitely be worth it, but instead the solo mode lacks any compelling reason to play it.

 

While Heavy Burger may not be a crossover in the sense that all the games are truly interacting with each other, having them all contribute their unique concepts and elements to the multiplayer action featured here does feel more substantial than just having the characters from these games compete directly. The hero from BurgerTime is now having to avoid being smacked by the heroes of Bad Dudes, needs to run across the pool table from Side Pocket, and make his way through the maze of Lock ‘N Chase. These are mostly faithful representations of the original titles because you’re practically running right through them, and maintaining the original graphics of those games, having the actual arcade cabinets as a framing device, and even having the Heavy Burger arena where everyone from every game can end up fighting against each other really does make this a unique and effective means of crossing over some games without losing their original spirit.