Publisher: Telesys
Release Date: October 1982
Fast Food is certainly a good example of what the company was trying to be. It's another funny game with an even more ridiculous cover than CocoNuts. There's just something undeniably fun looking about it. Look at all that food flying around! Look at those disembodied lips which remind me of old Twizzlers ads! Look at that decidedly car-less drive-in! If I had seen this one at a store in 1982, I might've bought it just because it looked like so much fun. I mean, I did see it on a store shelf at some point and buy it, but I would buy any Atari game as long as it's not too expensive. I have no idea who did the cover art for Telesys, but I hope they survived the game crash and had a long career. For all I know they really did make those Twizzlers ads. It's a shame we never really know these things. Telesys was founded by a man named Richard Taylor, and that's such a common name that MobyGames has over 700 of them in their database. That's not very helpful from a research perspective. I did find a picture of him in a vintage magazine article that also referred to Telesys games as "funny." I guess they don't really look that much different in 2024 than they did in 1982.
(The legend himself!)
I would say that Fast Food is about as simple as it gets, but I've played CocoNuts. Fast Food is at least more complicated than that. It's a very simple premise that you might be able to glean from the cover art. You are a disembodied mouth trying to eat all of the flying food you possibly can. Fast Food ups the ante by allowing you to move vertically as well as horizontally. It's hard to get away with horizontal-only motion unless you are Space Invaders or Galaga, so it's nice that they only tried that experiment once. The only thing you are not supposed to eat are the purple pickles. Eat too many of them and its game over. Hey, you don't have to tell me twice. I can't say I've ever seen anything tubular and purple and wanted to eat it. The different types of food only move in straight lines, but they are worth different amounts of points and travel at different speeds. I appreciate the attempt at variety, but I don't see anyone strategizing in this game. They are just going to catch whatever they can. It gets frantic fast. Every so often the screen says, "You are getting fatter" and then everything speeds up. It's a shame they couldn't animate the fattening, but the fine folks at Telesys weren't exactly miracle workers.
(I hope you weren't expecting anything else. This is just a one screenshot kind of game)
I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but the problem with Fast Food is the same one that plagued Atari 2600 games in general. It's just too simple for extended play. My games always last around the same amount of time, and I almost always get close to 1000 points. Those purple pickles start coming on fast, so even when I start out well everything goes downhill quickly. It's just hard to avoid the inevitable when everything starts moving so fast. I'm not going to be leaving behind a worse food item for a better one because there just isn't time for it. I don't know what anything is worth, and I don't really care. I'm just trying to avoid purple pickles.
And this is going to sound like a weird complaint, but I can't get over how weird the smacking mouth in this game looks. I get that they wanted to animate something because that was always impressive in the early 80s, but that thing doesn't look anything like a real mouth. You would expect some teeth or a tongue, but those red fleshy masses barely even look like lips. They look more like two tongues covered in bubble gum flapping against each other. Or perhaps a toothless mouth covered in denture cream trying to open and close. It's shown from an odd side view which doesn't work at all. They should've done a front view and had the teeth opening or closing. Honestly a non-moving mouth would've been preferable. It's better than having what looks like two uncooked burger patties kissing.
While definitely an improvement over CocoNuts, Fast Food is still a middle of the road Atari 2600 game. I have a little fun with it from time to time, but only being a little fun does not make a game actually good. Atari games can be thrilling and addictive, but Fast Food gets a little old after a few minutes. I can see why companies like Telesys failed so quickly. Video games were much more expensive at the time adjusted for inflation. Getting a new Atari game could run you something in the equivalent range of 80 or 90 dollars. That's a big investment for something you're going to get bored with in five minutes. I doubt any of the fringe 3rd party companies had any major hits because it was just too expensive. Luckily, this is 2024 where you can get Fast Food for only ten dollars. That's a fair price for a game based on poorly animated mouths and flying pickles. Fast food ranks at #107 overall which puts it right in the middle of the Atari section. Most Atari games in the purple section are worth playing for enthusiasts, so I'd call that a victory for now. It seems like there are a couple of Telesys games I like, so hopefully there are some hidden treasures to uncover moving forward.
Atari quality percentage 9/19 or 47.36%
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G01RKJ7-caaal5lgFfGgPfZRGcqWlv4E3E2E615UYKg/edit?usp=sharing
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