Panic Restaurant (NES Review)

Panic Restaurant
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released April 24, 1992 (JP) October, 1992 (US)
Designed by Kenji Eno
Developed by EIM Group
Published by Taito
NEVER (?) BEEN RE-RELEASED

It’s a looker, but those excellent (and large) sprites come at a steep cost.

A few months ago, I posted a fairly scathing review of Sunman, aka the Superman game by Sunsoft that lost the Superman license, then ultimately never released. I’ve wanted to review this game ever since because it’s probably the best 8-bit title developed by Kenji Eno. The man who would later go on to develop the landmark survival horror D games had tragically died in 2013 at only the age of 42. I didn’t want the only game of his covered in my little corner of the internet to be something I was so highly negative on. I want to celebrate the legacy of a man who devoted his life towards creating entertainment for others and who left gaming better than he found it. Maybe someday I’ll do a review of D, but today, I’m looking at his first unambiguously good game. Panic Restaurant isn’t important to the history of games. It’s just a short, solid hour-at-best hop ‘n smacker where you play as a chef who has to stop an evil Waluigi-looking chef. Which is strange because pop culture has taught me that all chefs are inherently evil.

You automatically lose weapons between each stage. Had this not been the case, I’m not entirely sure I’d have taken a hit in many areas. The spoon is the most common pick-up and is effectively a ranged longsword that I thought was the best weapon in the game.

Okay, so the premise is slightly generic, made even more so by the fact that, while the last boss is an evil chef, almost all the other bosses and basic enemies are food items. Because it’s a restaurant, you see. A gigantic one that has its own forest and ice caverns, I guess. It’s not the most inspired idea, but at least the action is good. Instead of jumping on enemies, you whack them with a weapon. You start with a skillet that has limited range, but alternatives are everywhere. The catch is you can only have one at a time, with no sub-weapons. In addition to the sword-like spoon, you can get unlimited plates that you can throw at enemies like freebees and a fork that works like a fairly hard to control pogo stick. The first time I went to use it, I took damage and reverted back to the frying immediately because I didn’t jump as high as I thought I would. It’s easily the worst weapon in the game. The combat in general is never as impactful as you would hope, and really is just barely decent enough to satisfy.

Getting a pot makes you invisible for a short amount of time, but you don’t move as fast as you’d want. There’s no run button, either.

While Panic Restaurant’s sprite work is charming, the limitations of the NES probably prevented better death animations or OOMPH to the various weapons. That sprite work also comes with a massive downside: massive amounts of slowdown. Panic Restaurant suffers from a ton of frame rate collapse, and unlike titles like, say, Mega Man 2 or 3, it never works in service to the action. It just causes an already somewhat slow game to come dangerous close to plodding. That was sort of the theme for my play sessions. Every bad element is just barely tolerable enough to not hurt the overall experience, while every good element is just barely good enough to carry the game over the finish line. It’s kind of remarkable how consistent that was. Five out of six levels were okay, but nothing special. The boss fights too, and the combat, as previously stated. This game is DECENT in gigantic capital letters, in a way few games really are.

The fifth level, set on slippery ice because that’s required for all platformers, was easily the worst part of the entire game.

Meanwhile, with the exception of the slowdown, most bad things only happen once. One cheap shot from an enemy placed just above a ladder you MUST climb, without being given enough room to avoid it, then it never happens again. One last pixel jump. One bad level. One bad boss fight. Sadly, that bad boss fight happened to be the last boss, where the game decided the only way to feel climatic was to give you a unique weapon (eggs) and have both you and not-Waluigi in the sky riding flying pans. It wasn’t very good, and then the game just ended. If not for the unskippable end-of-stage slot machines, segments that take FOREVER (and I barely ever won on them unless I was already maxed out on health) I think I could finish this in under thirty minutes.

Yet another game that has more McDonald’s menu items than all the McDonald’s games put together. This boss was the closest I came to dying, as I ultimately was down to my final heart.

I didn’t find any of the “hidden” mini-games fun.

It’s also one of the easier games I’ve reviewed in 2024. I never died this entire playthrough, even with a few cheap hits. This feels like a game with a much younger audience in mind, at least until the ice level, which has some brutally unforgiving timing-based sequences. Thankfully, the ship is righted for the final level, unlike Taito’s sequel to their first Flintstones game, where an excellent children’s game becomes insane in the final challenge. Otherwise, this kind of feels like it’s in the same boat as Surprise at Dino Peak, where I suspect that if Panic Restaurant had come out a year or two earlier than it did, it would be remembered as one of the better NES games. Even if I don’t necessarily think it is that good, it has broad appeal with lots of charm. Yea, so it’s not the most complicated game, but Panic Restaurant is solid thanks largely to level design that is just varied enough that it never gets boring and just challenging enough that you can’t play completely on cruise control. Besides the pogo-like fork, the collision is pretty good, enemy designs are mostly good, and it certainly doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s a reminder that Kenji Eno was the real deal. Had he been alive today, you can’t help but wonder if he’d see a movie like The Menu or TV shows like The Bear or Hell’s Kitchen, then remember that weird NES platformer he once made about a chef fighting sentient food and say “hmmmm.. what if I turned that into a horror game?”
Verdict: YES!

“I’ve got to find a better agent. I wonder who Wario used?”