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Panic Restaurant was one of the late-era NES games (released in April 1992 in Japan as Wanpaku Kokkun no Gourmet World and localized later that year with a redesigned main character and some changes in item placement), and it's one of the games I fooled around back in 2003 with a new NES emulator my brother set me up with. Later on, I did beat the game (with the help of save states), but it's a NES platformer, meaning that it's harder than it needs to be yet not long enough to justify a save system. (In the case of Panic Restaurant, there isn't). It's simple enough—Ohdove (a butchering of "Hors d'Oeurvre") has "taken your pretty little restaurant" and you have to use a variety of utensils to defeat the food that comes to attack you. Before you even enter the building, there's jumping hot dogs, carrots, and raw chicken. (There's a somewhat better description of Panic Restaurant over at HardcoreGaming 101.)

At the end of the day, it's simple and generic, but the question is, does it NEED to be? Could it be expanded into a more complex game, or would that just be worse? I'm not sure, but the idea of a food-themed game (the "lore" as the kids say these days, is rich) is ripe for the picking, pun not intended.

Under the old rating system I would've reviewed this as "Solid".