Berzerk
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Berzerk is a multi-directional shooter video game, released in 1980 by Stern Electronics of Chicago.
Description
The player controls a green stick-figure, representing a "humanoid." Using a joystick (and a firing button to activate a laser-like weapon), the player negotiates a maze filled with as many as eleven robots, who fire lasers back at the player character. A player can be killed by being shot, by running into a robot, by running into a wall of the maze, or by being touched by the player's nemesis, "Evil Otto."The function of Evil Otto, represented by a bouncing smiley face, is to quicken the pace of the game. Otto is unusual with regard to games of the period, in that there is no way to kill him. Otto can go through walls with impunity, and is attracted to the player character. If robots remain in the maze Otto moves slowly, about half as fast as the humanoid, but he speeds up to match the humanoid's speed once all the robots are killed.
The player advances by escaping from the maze through an opening at one of the far walls. Each robot destroyed is worth 50 points. Ideally, all the robots in the current maze have been destroyed before the player escapes, thus gaining the player a per-maze bonus (ten points per robot). The game has 64,000 mazes, and each level is designed to be more difficult to finish than the last. It has only one controller, but two-player games can be accomplished by alternating at the joystick.
Beginnings
Alan McNeil, an employee of Universal Research Laboratories (a division of Stern Electronics), had a dream one night involving a black-and-white video game in which he had to fight robots. This dream, with heavy borrowing from the BASIC game Robots (Daleks in the UK), was the basis for Berzerk, which was named for Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series of science fiction novels. ("Evil Otto" was named for a disliked fellow-employee.) In 1986, Stern Electronics and Evil Otto were mentioned as an unwholesome influence on children during the "Suicide Solution" lawsuit of Ozzy Osbourne along with Dungeons and Dragons, marijuana and Prince.
The idea for a black-and-white game was abandoned when the color game Defender was released earlier the same year to significant success. At that point Stern decided to use a color overlay board for Berzerk. A quick conversion was made, and all but the earliest versions of the game shipped with a color CRT display. The game was test-marketed successfully at a Chicago singles bar before general release.
Features
Probably the best-remembered feature of Berzerk is that the robots talk (thus making it one of the earliest talking games). While the game remains unplayed, the robots will taunt potential players with the phrase "coins detected in pocket". Evil Otto's entrance into play is announced with "Intruder Alert!" Successful destruction of the robots and escape from the maze results in the lament, "The humanoid must not escape!" If the player escapes the maze without destroying all the robots however, the remaining ones will tease, "Chicken! Fight like a robot!"
In 1980 computer voice simulation was extremely expensive—estimates were that this accomplishment cost the manufacturer US$1,000 per word; the English version had a thirty-word vocabulary. Stern nevertheless did not spare this expense, and some non-English versions were made, for example a Spanish version in which the robots would say "Intruso alerta" and "El humanoide no debe escapar." as well as an un-released Esperanto version in which the robots would say "Truidi Vigla" and "Variolo, ataki eco~roboto".
Another memorable feature is the action of the robots—unlike adversaries in most other contemporary games, Berzerk
Two different versions of the game were released. As a player's score increases, the colors of the enemy robots change, and the robots can have more bullets on the screen at the same time (once they reach the limit, they cannot fire again until one or more of their bullets detonates; the limit applies to the robots as a group, not as individuals). In the original version, the sequence goes:
- Yellow robots that don't fire
- Red robots that can fire one bullet
- White robots that can fire two bullets
The revised version, which had the much larger production run of the two, features a longer color sequence that also included purple, green, and light blue robots. In this version, the robot sequence went up to five normal speed bullets, then they began firing fast bullets, starting with one fast bullet, and eventually going as high as seven fast bullets at once. After 20,000 points the robots stay light blue and may have up to seven fast bullets on screen for the remainder of play. To balance the greatly increased threat from the robots in this version, Evil Otto's pursuit speed remains at its normal (half or equal the player's speed) level throughout.
In both versions, a free man can be awarded at 5,000 and/or 10,000 points, set by internal DIP switches.
Experienced players almost always moved from left to right (escaping through the right-hand door) because of the geometry of how the robots and human character both shot (going up/down or down/up would lessen the time needed to avoid Evil Otto). In a dire situation a shot fired from a robot could be made to pass through the neck of the player without killing him, reffered to by some players as the "bulletproof necktie" (this was duplicated in the Atari 2600 version).
Problems and player death toll
The game was originally planned around a Motorola 6809E processor, but problems with the external clock for this CPU led to its abandonment in favor of a Zilog Z80.
The game units were particularly known for failure of the optical joystick unit; Stern suffered the cancellation of about 4,200 orders for new games because of previous purchasers' bad experiences with these joysticks. The company responded by issuing free replacement joysticks in a leaf-switch design by Wico.
Berzerk was the first video game known to have been involved in the death of a player. In January 1981, 19-year-old Jeff Dailey died of a heart attack soon after posting a score of 16,660 on Berzerk. In October of the following year, Peter Burkowski made the Berzerk top-ten list twice in fifteen minutes, just a few seconds before also dying of a heart attack at the age of only 18.
Legacy
Berzerk was later ported to several home game machines, including the Apple II, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and Vectrex. ROM images also exist for use with the MAME videogame emulator.
The Atari 2600 version featured options including games in which Evil Otto could be temporarily killed (he always returned).
Stern later released a similar game called Frenzy as a sequel, and a Berzerk console can be converted to Frenzy simply by replacing one processor (ZPU-1000 to ZPU-1001) and installing a different game ROM. The game also served as an inspiration for later, more sophisticated robot-based games such as Shamus, Xybots, [[Robotron: 2084]], as well as (less directly) Castle Wolfenstein and Doom.
Song
In 1982, Buckner and Garcia recorded a song titled "Goin' Berzerk", using sound effects from the game, and released it on the album Pac-Man Fever.
External links
- [Berzerk game movie] (site uses frames which prevent automatic navigation to the movie page from another website)
- [The KLOV entry for Berzerk]
- [Article at The Dot Eaters], with a history of Berzerk
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