Pressure Cooker, by Garry Kitchen, was first published for the Atari 2600 in 1983, by Activision. It is a food-preparation game where you play as a burger chef (called “Short-Order Sam“) trying to package items with the right ingredients for your customers.

At the bottom of the screen is an electronic order board that shows you what ingredients are needed. The ingredients are thrown from food dispensers on the right-hand side of the screen, and you have to catch them and put them into the packages that are moving slowly down a conveyor belt on the left-hand side of the screen. If you don’t want a particular ingredient you can hold down the fire button to bounce it away. When you’ve assembled what you think is the correct item you must then grab it and walk off the bottom of the screen, into the packaging room. You must then put the completed item into the correct isle, dependant on its colour-coding.

Key to actually getting anywhere in Pressure Cooker is resisting the temptation to pick up everything that is thrown at you. Only pick up ingredients that you need. Standing nearer to the dispenser, to bounce unwanted items away, will make the item you need appear quicker (in theory). If you catch an unwanted item you can’t then drop it. You have to put it somewhere.

Pressure Cooker is well-executed, with decent graphics and sound, and it even has a jolly tune that isn’t too annoying. The gameplay is a little confusing for my tastes, though, and I think it could have been improved with a bit more effort.

More: Pressure Cooker on Wikipedia