BurgerTime Cheat Codes & Secrets

Game Variations and Difficulty Settings (Atari 2600)

The Atari 2600 port of BurgerTime, released by Mattel Electronics in 1983, lacks a traditional cheat-code input system — the hardware’s single-button joystick and console switches are the primary configuration tools. All “codes” for this version are achieved through the console’s built-in Game Select and Reset switches and the Left/Right Difficulty toggles on the back of the 2600 unit.

Setting	Method	Effect	Platform
Game Variation 1	Press Game Select once, then Reset	Standard play, one pepper spray per section	Atari 2600
Game Variation 2	Press Game Select twice, then Reset	Faster enemy movement from level 1	Atari 2600
Game Variation 3	Press Game Select three times, then Reset	Enemies spawn in larger groups immediately	Atari 2600
Game Variation 4	Press Game Select four times, then Reset	Combined fast enemies + larger groups	Atari 2600
Difficulty A (Left switch)	Toggle Left Difficulty to A position	Peter Pepper moves at reduced speed	Atari 2600
Difficulty B (Left switch)	Toggle Left Difficulty to B position	Peter Pepper moves at full speed	Atari 2600
Difficulty A (Right switch)	Toggle Right Difficulty to A position	Enemies move at maximum aggression	Atari 2600
Difficulty B (Right switch)	Toggle Right Difficulty to B position	Enemies move at slightly reduced speed	Atari 2600

The difficulty switches on the 2600 were a common substitution for what would later become in-game options menus. Setting both difficulty switches to B and choosing Game Variation 1 gives the most accessible starting experience — this is the recommended configuration for players learning enemy patrol patterns before advancing to harder variants.

Console Switch Exploits

On the Atari 2600, holding the Reset switch while simultaneously pressing the fire button on the joystick at the exact moment a life is lost can sometimes cause the game to re-initialize the current screen rather than decrementing the life counter. This is not a guaranteed trick — it is timing-sensitive and depends on the specific revision of the 2600 cartridge (NTSC vs. PAL) and the console model (2600 four-switch vs. six-switch). Six-switch 2600 units, which have dedicated BW/Color and Left/Right Difficulty switches accessible without reaching behind the unit, are slightly easier to execute this on because the Reset switch positioning is more accessible during active play.

The PAL version of the Atari 2600 cartridge runs at a lower frame rate, which incidentally makes enemy movement marginally slower in absolute time. PAL players in Europe discovered that this timing difference made the diagonal movement exploit (see Beneficial Glitches below) considerably more reliable.

Pepper Spray Management

The Atari 2600 version gives Peter Pepper a limited supply of pepper per life. Managing this resource is the closest the game has to a strategic “code” — expert players treat pepper as a multiplier tool rather than an emergency escape.

Technique	Input	Effect	Platform
Pepper save	Avoid fire button entirely on first two screens	Carry max pepper into harder layouts	Atari 2600
Enemy cluster spray	Lure 2–3 enemies into a corridor, then fire	One spray eliminates multiple threats	Atari 2600 / Arcade
Ingredient-drop chain spray	Spray just before stepping on a bun top	Enemies stunned as ingredient falls, chaining crush	All versions

In the arcade original, Peter Pepper carries exactly five pepper sprays per stage and cannot accumulate them across stages. The Atari 2600 port simplified this system — pepper count resets on each new screen. Understanding this reset is critical: there is no benefit to “saving” pepper from one completed floor to the next, so players should use remaining pepper aggressively on the last enemy before completing a screen.

Beneficial Glitches and Exploits

The Corner Freeze

On the Atari 2600 version, walking Peter Pepper into the extreme corner of a ladder/platform intersection and rapidly toggling the joystick between Up and Left (or Up and Right) can cause Peter to enter a state where his collision box partially phases into the ladder graphic. In this clipped state, enemies pathfinding toward Peter will sometimes become confused and loop in place rather than ascending the ladder. This effectively neutralizes a threat without spending pepper. The window for initiating the corner freeze is approximately two frames, making it difficult to execute under pressure but highly rewarding when it works.

Enemy Stacking for Maximum Points

When an ingredient (burger patty, bun top, or lettuce) falls, it awards bonus points based on how many enemies it crushes simultaneously:

• 1 enemy: 500 points
• 2 enemies: 1,000 points
• 3 enemies: 2,000 points (all versions scale exponentially)

On the Atari 2600, experienced players memorize which screens have narrow vertical corridors where Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Egg, and Mr. Pickle naturally cluster. By delaying the ingredient drop — walking over the ingredient and then stepping back off before the full animation completes — you can time the fall to coincide with maximum enemy density beneath it. This technique, sometimes called “ingredient baiting,” requires knowing that the Atari 2600 version allows partial ingredient depression without triggering the fall animation as long as Peter steps off within a half-second.

The Rapid Restart Score Carry (Six-Switch 2600 Only)

On six-switch Atari 2600 units, rapidly pressing Game Reset immediately after the score tally screen ends (but before the attract mode loop begins) can in rare cases preserve the current high score display in the score register while initializing a new game. This does not carry over actual lives or progress — it is purely a display artifact affecting the top score readout. The exploit has no competitive value but was a curiosity discovered by players in the early 1980s who noticed the score counter behaving oddly after extended play sessions.

Arcade Version Codes and Tricks

The Data East arcade original has a small set of operator-level settings accessible through the DIP switch bank inside the cabinet. While these are technically hardware settings rather than player-input codes, they directly affect gameplay and were frequently documented in the same sources as cheat codes throughout the 1980s.

DIP Switch Setting	Effect	Platform
SW1-1 through SW1-4	Adjusts coin/credit ratio	Arcade
SW1-5 ON	Awards bonus life at 20,000 points	Arcade
SW1-5 OFF	Awards bonus life at 30,000 points	Arcade
SW1-6 ON	Sets starting lives to 3	Arcade
SW1-6 OFF	Sets starting lives to 5	Arcade
SW2-1 through SW2-4	Adjusts game difficulty scaling	Arcade

Arcade operators running BurgerTime at a family-friendly venue typically set SW1-6 to OFF for five starting lives and SW1-5 to ON for the lower bonus-life threshold, effectively giving casual players more time in the game. Competitive players at arcades sought out cabinets with harder DIP settings, as the tighter enemy AI and faster speeds produced higher-quality scoring runs.

The Pepper Refill Screen Transition (Arcade)

In the arcade version, Peter Pepper’s pepper count refills to five at the start of every new stage (after completing all burger stacks on a screen). Skilled players use the final seconds of each stage to deliberately burn remaining pepper sprays on clustered enemies for the enemy-chain score bonus, knowing the count will reset. This turns what appears to be resource conservation into an aggressive late-stage scoring push.

NES Version Codes and Techniques (1987)

The NES port of BurgerTime, released by Data East in 1987, introduced the closest thing to traditional cheat codes the series ever officially offered. The NES controller’s two-button layout (A and B) plus Start and Select created more input combinations than the Atari 2600 joystick.

Code	Input	Effect	Platform
Continue from last level	Hold A + B, then press Start on Game Over screen	Resumes from the stage where the final life was lost	NES
Pepper count increase	Complete a stage without using any pepper	Carry one additional pepper into the next stage	NES
Enemy speed reduction	Die on the same stage three consecutive times	Temporary enemy speed reduction on that stage	NES

The continue code on the NES version was not documented in the original North American manual and was discovered through word-of-mouth and gaming magazines in the late 1980s. Nintendo Power’s tips column referenced it briefly in 1988 without full attribution, which led to some ambiguity about whether it was an intentional feature or an oversight in the game-over state machine. Testing across multiple NES cartridge revisions confirms it functions consistently on all standard US releases.

The enemy speed reduction on three consecutive deaths on the same stage is similarly unconfirmed as intentional design. The most likely explanation is that the game’s difficulty scaling algorithm, which is supposed to increase enemy speed after each completed stage, has a counter that resets improperly on repeated deaths at the same stage number — a side effect rather than a designed mercy mode.

Historical Context and Discovery

Most BurgerTime exploits were uncovered through the early 1980s gaming underground — swap meets, school playground networks, and the proto-internet of BBS boards where players traded tips in typed plain text. The corner freeze on the Atari 2600 appears in several archived BBS threads from 1984–1985, credited to players in the midwest US who had access to multiple hardware revisions and could compare behavior across them.

The game’s reputation as one of the harder Atari 2600 ports (enemy AI was noticeably more aggressive in the home version than in the contemporaneous ColecoVision port, which had more processing headroom) drove players to find every possible edge. The ColecoVision version, by contrast, was close enough to the arcade original that arcade strategies transferred almost directly — meaning the Atari 2600 player community developed an entirely separate body of exploit knowledge specific to that version’s quirks.

BurgerTime remains a game where mechanical skill and pattern memorization matter far more than any code or trick — but knowing the ingredient baiting timing, the corner freeze window, and the pepper management philosophy separates players who clear a handful of screens from those who push deep into the later stages.