Pressure Cooker (2600) Review

Date purchased: Sept. 25, 2015
Price paid: $0.00 -- free game under $10 with any other purchase
Dates played: Apr. 20-22, 2016
Playtime: Unknown
Date reviewed: Apr. 22, 2016
Date posted: Jan. 5, 2023
Rating: 7/10

While there is no end, you do have a Performance Rating which maxes out at 99, so I'm considering it beaten since I got it up to 99.

The basic idea of the game is that you are a short order cook who has to put together hamburger orders, adding combinations of tomato, onion, lettuce, and cheese, or none of them, as the burger gets dropped on a conveyor belt, completing it before it falls off the end of the conveyor belt, and then taking the completed burger to a second room to place it in one of three color coded machines that bag the completed burger. Each of the toppings gets spit out at you at random from a dedicated topping dispenser, which you have to catch and then place on the burger, which the ability of rejecting a topping you don't want. There are always 3 open orders, until you get to the end of each round of 12 orders when it doesn't add more orders if you've filled all of them (so if you've filled the first 10, only the two remaining orders are there, and only one order if you fill the 11th). It definitely gave me a Tapper feel.

What's neat about this game is the Performance Rating. If you miss a topping, add multiples of the same topping, let the burger fall off the conveyor belt, or miss/place the completed order into the wrong bagger, your performance rating drops. It starts at 50 and when it drops to 0, it's Game Over. Your rating goes up by 10 every 10,000 points. Having the second room to drop off the orders adds a nice aspect.

The biggest problem is that because the toppings come out at random, with a decent chance of it giving something you need, and it does take time to run back and forth between the line and catching the toppings, it does become literally impossible to have enough time to fill the majority of the orders, especially when it gets all Tetris on you (although this game predates Tetris by a few years) and refuses to give you a topping included in ANY order.

This was definitely a pleasant surprise.