The Flintstones: Burger Time in Bedrock

"Want a direct port of Burgertime Deluxe for the GBC? Well, here's your chance."

I've always loved Burgertime. The little chef running up and down ladders making burgers. Yet, little does he know, the sausages and the eggs are trying to kill him. I sort of chuckled when playing this... a sausage... heh... anyway...
Plus, I've always liked The Flintstones. Though (the producers at Hanna-Barbara even said this) the show was very much like The Honeymooners, (they had writers from The Honeymooners work for The Flinstones. Stupid fact.) T.F., if you will, had its funny points.
Yet little did I know that these two things would merge.
You guessed it, folks! All of the levels and items are directly from the game Burgertime Deluxe, that was released about 8 years ago. This game just happens to be with the line-up of classic characters in arcade comebacks. There's this game, Yogi Bears' Balloon Blast (sigh... straight from Taito's puzzler, Pop 'N Pop) and Dexter's Laboratory Robot Rampage. (Elevator Action, also from Taito) Don't get me wrong... All of these games are good, and they're done really well... they just could've been better.
The only thing that changed between this and B.T.D. are the sprites, basically. No real graphic facelift really.
Gameplay? If you've played any BurgerTime game, you know what this is. You're a chef (this time, either Fred Flintstone or Barney Rubble) and you run around the board, running over giant hamburger meats, buns, and cheese. When you run over the top bun, for example, it falls, hits the cheese. The cheese falls and hits the sausage. The sausage hits the bottom bun, which falls on the plate. There are chain reactions, you see. The object of each level is to get all the parts of the hamburger (some burgers are of different lengths, with up to 4 burgers with a max of 4 toppings each!) onto the plates at the bottom of the screen. While doing this, you run from giant pieces of sausage and cheese, (heh, cheese...) but you can stun them for a couple of seconds with a can of pepper. A very original concept for its time.
Why did I give this game a 6, though? Replay value and speed. Speed, you say? Yes. Sadly, the GameBoy version runs faster than this! This game can get really slow, sometimes excruciatingly boring, which definetly lowers the level of replay. If it takes you 4 minutes to beat the first level, when there aren't save blocks and there aren't passwords until the fourth level, why go to level 2? I never had any speed problems with the original, but this cartridge can get boring... almost as bad as the coulda-been-decent-but-sucked-because-it-was-slow Austin Powers series for the same system.
If you really like BurgerTime, or if you're a mad collector of Flintstones memorabilia, get this game. If not, you're really better of getting the original. Sorry to say, Taito...

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 12/13/00, Updated 12/13/00