March 27, 2003

Thursday March 27, 2003 • Howard Tayler

Tuesday night, in response to the overwhelming amount of email I got about The Perfect Hamburger, I went out and bought a burger at the local branch of Fuddruckers. On my way there I stopped by the local Electronics Boutique and picked up my pre-ordered copy of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Let me start by telling you about the burger I got, and how it compared to The Perfect Hamburger.

I ordered a 1/3 lb burger with cheese and bacon. When it showed up on a buttered-and-toasted (and freshly baked, if their marketing and my sense of taste are to be believed) bun, I topped it with pickles, onions, a slice of tomato, shredded lettuce, mayo, catsup, and house-brand mustard.

To be sure, it was very tasty. Aesthetically, however, it was a misshapen lump. The cheese was NOT melted, the bacon was crisp, but not properly fused into the cheese, and the bun overhung the sandwich by almost an inch all the way around. The burger was also fried, rather than flame-broiled.

It was about half-again the cost of a top-of-the-line fast-food sandwich, and in fairness, it was more than half-again as good. But it was not, by any stretch of the imagination, The Perfect Hamburger.

To all of you who recommended it, I thank you -- I enjoyed finding fault with it as much as I liked eating it, which is a pretty impressive combination. Discovering that it was The Perfect Hamburger would have been a little disappointing. Commercialized perfection approaches blasphemy.

When I got home, and once the kids (for whom I purchased the game -- really!) were abed, I popped the Zelda disc into the ol' GameCube, and gave it a test-drive:

Compared to the two Zelda titles for N64, the game is wonderful. That's not saying much, however, because for some reason those games just grate on me. My kids love 'em, but I've never gotten into them.

Compared to several other GameCube titles I've played, the game is ALSO wonderful. The colors are soothing, the gameplay is smooth, and the overall experience was quite relaxing (except for the part where I kept getting thrown in jail on this one island...)

I played for a couple of hours, tops, and then turned the game off without saving. Why? So that the game appears "fresh" when my kids finish earning it by topping off their chore chart. Like I said, it's not for me (at least not yet.)

So... Tuesday was burgers-and-videogames. All told, it probably should have been dieting-and-cartooning. Maybe next Tuesday.