Data Eastober: Memories of an Arcader

Much like Capcom and Konami, Data East was a company that rose to prominence during the 80s, and much like their fellow publishers, they put out games that more than made an impression.

While I didn’t have a chance to play most of these titles, I still was impressed by them, and there were a few titles I did play. Starting with this one.

A very obscure NES title that I did have in my library. Couldn’t make it past a few floors though.

Before the Arcade version, this was my first exposure to Burger Time.

This one I played years later as a rental from Blockbuster.

My cousin had this so I was able to play it once.

One of my personal favorites from my Disney Quest days.

While my exposure to most of Data East’s titles was limited, the games I was able to play were still great experiences, and like with most developers/publishers of that day, Data East was able to distinguish themselves with how they made their games, and these aforementioned titles helped showcase that. I only wish I could have played more of these titles because Data East’s library was pretty impressive.

Fortunately thanks to the Switch I have been able to get a few of these titles, namely the Arcade versions of Bad Dudes, Burger Time, and its sequel, Super Burger Time. Then when I downloaded the Game Boy app once it was available, I discovered Burger Time Deluxe.

Play this with the color settings on, it’s even more fun!

In many ways, Data East helped add to my video game experience early on in my life as Capcom and Konami did, and while the company doesn’t exist as it once was, G-Mode has definitely picked up the slack and helped preserve much of what Data East has, or at least from what I have seen, and I do hope this leads to ever more stuff being released. In fact, I think I might just go check to see if there’s more after I put up this post.

But in all, Data East was a company that stood out, and it’s games more than speak for themselves as I’ve noticed from the ones I’ve played. While not all games were as fun, there’s no denying that they did try to do different things, so there was no shortage of variety.

So if you stumble upon a Data East game – through the usual means or otherwise – you’ll definitely be in for an experience even if not all games match your tastes. And when it comes to games from Data East during the 80s, you will never be bored.