Burger Stack

Overview

Burger Stack is a ladder-platform chase where you play a chef whose ingredients are scattered across five tiers of steel walkways, and whose kitchen has been invaded by living food. Four burgers need building, each four layers tall — top bun, patty, lettuce, bottom bun — and no layer moves until you physically walk across it. Your weight knocks the layer down one platform, and if it lands on the layer beneath, that one gives way too, so well-planned walks set off chain reactions that assemble a burger in seconds. The catch is the staff of the damned: sausages, eggs and pickles that hunt you across platforms and up ladders. Your only defense is a pepper shaker with three charges that freezes anything caught in its cloud for four seconds. The elegant violence of the game is combining the two problems: drop a layer while a critter stands on it and it plummets two platforms, the critter is carried off for a 500-point bonus, and your burger builds itself out of your enemy's bad positioning. Four kitchens, each with a different ladder map and faster critters, stand between you and closing time.

How to Play

Press Start Cooking. Left and Right run along the current platform; Up and Down climb ladders when you are standing on one. Walking fully across an ingredient layer drops it; layers that reach the bottom plate stack up, and four stacked layers complete the burger. Space fires pepper in the direction you face, freezing every critter near the cloud. On touch screens, hold the direction pad to move and tap PEPPER. P pauses, R restarts. Touching an unfrozen critter costs a life and respawns you at the bottom; three lives per shift. Complete all four burgers to open the next kitchen, and clear kitchen four to win the run.

Tips & Strategy

Never chase ingredients one at a time — read a burger column top to bottom and plan a single route that crosses its layers in order, because each crossing can trigger the next drop for free. The critter-ride bonus is the biggest score lever in the game, so invert your instincts: instead of dodging a sausage, lure it onto a layer you are about to drop, step off, and let gravity do the cooking. Save pepper for escapes, not conveniences; three charges evaporate fast, and the only refill is a finished burger, which means your pepper economy improves exactly when the kitchen is nearly clear. Ladders are safe thinking spots only briefly — critters climb too, so pause mid-ladder just long enough to pick your next crossing, then commit. When two critters converge from both sides, climb rather than pepper: vertical moves break their pursuit line and cost nothing. And on later kitchens, open the level by dropping whatever layer already has a critter parked on it — an early 500 points and one less hunter is the strongest first move available.

What Makes It Distinct

Platform chases usually separate traversal from scoring. Burger Stack welds them: the same walk that builds your burger is the walk that baited the trap, and the ingredients double as both objective and weapon. Every route decision is simultaneously a construction plan and an ambush, which is why the 1982 original design still holds up.