Single Credit Review 004 – Timber – Arcade

1984 – Bally/Midway

Timber is a single screen classic arcade style game. The goal is to take your lumberjack, who looks suspiciously like Mario, and chop down trees, that sprout up as you chop them down. As I progressed through levels, more trees sprouted up, birds fell out of them and angry bears threw bee hives at me. I don’t know why these bears are throwing bees or what made them so pissed, but they are honing in on the poor lumberjack. Bears: protectors of the forest!

The controls are really responsive and it is very easy to hone the lumberjack up to chop down trees. You have to make sure you move out of the way of a tree after you chop it down otherwise it will fall on you! The main issue I had on my first play through was running into trees, which causes you to fall back stunned for a couple of seconds. That is definitely something to get used to and will be very important to avoid in later levels when tons of dodging is needed. Death comes at colliding with bees, other woodland creatures or if the timer runs out in each level.

On my first run through of Timber, I got to the 5th level and had around 76,000 points. Honestly, that’s pretty good and I feel like I could do a lot better with practice. The definition of a great arcade game is to let you play just long enough to feel like you have accomplished something to make you want to come back to spend more money and Timber definitely does that. There are also a bonus stage that is thrown in every few levels that breaks up the action nicely.

– Pros –
– Awesome arcade action
– Responsive controls
– 2 player coop for competition
– The “one more time” playable aspect

– Cons –
– Running into trees
– Scary angry bears

– Single Credit Synopsis –
In the end, Timber is a classic arcade game and I’m surprised that I don’t hear about it more often. It has a great feel to it and gives you enough with a single credit to make you want to play again to get a higher score, the definition of a great arcade game. I definitely added this one to my favorites list and will be coming back to it.

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