Let's begin our Tour of the World Tour and... well, let's see... we're presented with "worlds" (but the initially-available world is merely identified with an American flag... and for that matter, the "globe" of the USA seems to have extreme poles of the Statue of Liberty and Central Park... uh, okay?) and these worlds are apparently subdivided into stages, indeed ten of them in this case.
Without further ado, let us jump straight into our first stage: The Big Apple Street. Wait, what's this?! I know I had been warned these existed based on their lack of existence in the WiiWare version, but this is an honest-to-goodness cutscene? In BurgerTime?! What's going on here!
Oh! ...oh... ohgosh... I'm mildly horrified. I know chef Peter Pepper wasn't exactly the most detailed fellow back in the day, so there's an awful lot of room for interpretation, but he seems more than a little uncanny here... He's basically a big-headed, noodle-appendaged "kid" with a huge head... but to negate the excessively youthful appearance of his figure (even in spite of his prominent moustache), they've... given him severely sunken eyes? ...oh, and those fingers! They're like straws with clubbed endings! (At least he's a snappy dresser once his clothes are wrapped around him instead of being limited poly count obects to be unceremoniously and mercifully quickly slid from their initial resting places for the sake of preserving what illusion they still project.) Please, no more! I don't want to examine him any more closely than we have now!
Which... fortunately we won't, and his profile figure is far more palatable to the eye and passable as a persona to be passed off for our plucky protagonist, Peter Pepper. Well, he's ready to go, and we're ready to go... let's go! ...catch... a cab! ...or not... that was weird, but at least it was a fairly interesting means of introducing our first food-based foe: "Mr. Sausage" has been restyled as one "Frank Furter"... well, at least it's marginally better(ish) than the original.
Okay, that's enough of that, let's get straight to the gameplay! This part at least should seem familiar given our arcade-oriented exploration of the original. But what's this? We've got the same sort of action... platforms, ladders, enemies, and burger pieces... but now it's been wrapped around a cylindrical "block"... that's at least interesting for a change of pace, though I'm not yet sure how the change in perspective might alter our gameplay prospects.
The most significant departure in terms of gameplay is the fact that Peter Pepper can now JUMP... wow! This is actually a huge changeup in the dynamics of the BurgerTime formula in a number of subtle ways. For starters, you don't have to constantly run from enemies if you can simply jump over them... which is perhaps TOO drastic a departure, since all the sudden YOU have all the power and the enemies are pretty much entirely helplessly wandering around the environment, clinging desperately to contact damage being the final bit of strength they have on their side. (Poor little guys! ...now they're just food to be served up by a crazed chef with a penchant for preparing his dishes by walking all over them!)
The other major way this changes things is that you can actually jump over burger ingredients, meaning that you won't automatically drop them as you pass over them. Between the food and the enemy food suddenly becoming mere ingredients in whatever culinary feat you might dream up, this says to me that the emphasis has shifted away from the painstaking navigatorial challenge for the arcade's emphasis towards daring you to manufacture the most impressive combo platters possible, which is also something supported by the stage select screen tracking your progress based on score and time.
Further underlining this new interpretation of Peter Pepper's priorities is the addition of more pepper in his pockets, the fact that it refreshes between lives, and the fact that the shaker pickup is more invitingly placed and remain a more consistent fixture of the stage rather than a sparingly-provided reward to be collected quickly or not at all. It also replenishes ALL your pepper stock rather than simply giving you one more unit.
Besides this, the enemy behavior seems a bit more difficult to gauge consistently (which is saying something, given the original) due to some weird acts like Frank Furter going up and immediately down a ladder or even seeming to mimic Peter's movements on the floor below. (Also, some wear hats while others do not?!)
All these changes put all the power in the player's hands, so it's all on the stage design to provide the challenge.
I'm actually not sure what Pete thought he needed that taxi for in the first place, since all his actual "work" is about stepping on foodstuffs to make them fall together into burgers. (Even more confusing is that an enemy is apparently driving it... and driving it continuously around the game environment... interesting.
