The player controls chef Peter Pepper who walks across oversized ingredients in a maze of platforms and ladders, causing them to fall and stack on buns below, eventually creating complete burgers.

In the United States, Data East USA licensed BurgerTime for distribution by Bally Midway as a standard dedicated arcade game.

The Data East and Midway versions are distinguished by the manufacturer's name on the title screen and by the marquee and cabinet artwork; the game itself is identical.

Each level is a maze of platforms and ladders in which giant burger ingredients (bun, meat patty, tomato, lettuce) are arranged.

Ice cream, coffee, and French fries appear on occasion, awarding bonus points and one extra pepper shot when collected.

That year, they also released versions for the Atari 2600, Apple II, Aquarius, and, as a self-booting disk, the IBM PC.

[19] Game Machine later listed Hamburger on their June 15, 1983 issue as being the twenty-third most-successful table arcade unit of the month.

[21] Computer and Video Games gave it a positive review, comparing the level structure to Donkey Kong (1981), stating that BurgerTime has "a charm all its own" and praising the controls.

[4] The Deseret News called BurgerTime "one of the real surprises of 1983 for the Intellivision" and gave the ColecoVision version three-and-a-half stars out of four.

[22] BurgerTime received a Certificate of Merit in the category of "1984 Videogame of the Year (Less than 16K ROM)" at the 5th annual Arkie Awards.

A 3D update, BurgerTime World Tour, was released in 2011 for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, and in 2012 for WiiWare.

In late 2019/early 2020, it was released with fellow Data East titles Karate Champ, Caveman Ninja and Bad Dudes in an arcade cabinet for home use by manufacturer Arcade1Up.

[33][34][35] The NES version is also included in the 2017 compilation Data East All-Star Collection for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

[42] Elements of BurgerTime were incorporated into the episode "Gameboy" of the DIC Entertainment animated series Captain N: The Game Master.

[44] The MAME world record was verified by Twin Galaxies on December 2, 2016, as 7,837,750 by Roger Edwin Blair III of Mountain City, Tennessee.