Ben Bero Beh

Ben Bero Beh is a platform game Taito released to Japanese arcades in 1984 — and only there, since the machine never officially made it to the West. For decades it was a title known mostly to collectors, until modern re-releases finally gave it a second life. The premise remains refreshing for the genre: you are neither plumber nor knight but a superhero fireman.

An apartment tower is ablaze and Ben enters from the top. You work your way down, floor by floor, armed with nothing but a fire extinguisher. Flames must be put out, but the extinguisher has a short reach and only sprays straight ahead, so every fire demands that you step uncomfortably close. Meanwhile the building itself fights you: floors crumble underfoot, light fixtures drop from ceilings, gas hisses from broken pipes and can explode, and creatures pop out of doorways. At the very bottom waits the goal — rescuing Ben's girlfriend.

Mechanically it is an odd hybrid. Because you are descending, you are constantly jumping into the unknown below the screen edge, which makes the platforming slower and more methodical than the era's other climbing games — and guesswork is punished without mercy. The difficulty is high even by arcade standards, and death often arrives from places you could not have seen. That stings precisely because between deaths the game is genuinely fun: dousing fires feels good and the burning house feels alive. Taito fans will also spot cameos by characters from the company's other arcade games.

Today Ben Bero Beh is worth trying as a curiosity — a look at Taito in its experimental years, testing how much a platformer could carry. Give the descent a little time and the game reveals a nervous rhythm all of its own.

On oldgame.cz you can drop into the burning tower straight from your browser, nothing to install.