Pressure Cooker

He developed the game idea after seeing burgers moving out on a conveyor belt at a Burger King. Upon the game's release, contemporary reviews in found the game relatively unoriginal, while other reviews complimented its graphics.

• Title — Pressure Cooker • Developer — Activision • Publisher — Activision • Designer — Garry Kitchen • Genre — Action • Platforms — Atari 2600

• Illustration — In the assembly room, the player must collect the right ingredients and assemble the hamburger. • Illustration — Once a hamburger is assembled, the player then enters the wrapping room and drops it down one of the chutes. Pressure Cooker is set in a restaurant called "The Grille". The player controls a cook named Short-Order Sam via the joystick to move him across the two playfields: the assembly room and the wrapping room. The game is played by either one player, or two-players taking turns. The game select option on the Atari 2600 allows for more difficult modes of gameplay where the player has less time to complete a burger order. Orders for specific burger toppings appear in the assembly rooms electronic order board, where the player can either grab the necessary ingredients spewed out by the food dispenser machine. Items tossed out of the food dispenser can either be collected by Sam or rejected by bouncing them off his belly. When a burger is completed, the player must grab the it and take it to the Wrapping and Sacking Machine and place it in the correct chute. The player starts with 50 performance points displayed at the left of the open flame oven. Performance points are earned when the general score (displayed above the oven) reaches over 10,000 points. Points are lost when any condiment is wasted by not being collected or rejected by Sam or too much of the same requested item is placed on one burger. More points are lost when the player delivers the hamburger to the wrong chute or a burger is placed outside the chute, or if a hamburger falls off the conveyor belt. Points are gained by collecting condiments, placing them on burgers, and delivering a completed burger to the correct chute. The game ends when the Performance Rating is dropped to zero, or the scoring limit of 999,999 is reached.

Pressure Cooker was designed by Garry Kitchen. Prior to the game, Kitchen had made the Atari 2600 games Space Jockey, a port of Donkey Kong and Keystone Kapers. Kitchen was inspired to make the game when in line at a Burger King and saw the burgers move on a conveyor belt. The game was developed in about eight months. The music in Pressure Cooker was written by a professional jingle writer. The Atari 2600 could only produce certain notes, leading to Kitchen purchasing an electronic keyboard and going through which notes the system could perform and then telling the jingle writer he could only use those notes for the music.