| Berzerk | |
|---|---|
 Arcade flyer | |
| Developer(s) | Stern Electronics |
| Publisher(s) | Stern Electronics |
| Designer(s) | Alan McNeil |
| Platform(s) | Arcade,Atari 2600,Vectrex,Atari 5200 |
| Release | November 1980
|
| Genre(s) | Maze,Shooter |
| Mode(s) | 1-2 players alternating turns |
Berzerk is a video game designed by Alan McNeil and released forarcades in 1980 byStern Electronics ofChicago. The game involves a Humanoid Intruder who has to escape maze-like rooms that are littered with robots that slowly move towards and shoot at the Humanoid. The player can shoot at the robots to try and escape the room. Along with the robots, a smiley face known as Evil Otto appears to hunt down the player within each room.
Following a task to fix some technical problems onboards, Stern allowed McNeil to develop his own game. He slowly developed a game initially with robots, later adding the walls and the Evil Otto character to expand on the gameplay. After the company was visited by a salesperson promoting a "speech chip", McNeil took the offer and incorporated digitized voices in the game that taunt the player during game play andattract mode. Along with games likeStratovox (1980), it was one of the earliest games to feature speech synthesis in arcade games.
Stern premiered the game at theAmusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA) exposition in Chicago in late 1980. It was released shortly thereafter, and sold around 15,000 units. The game received ports for theAtari 2600,Atari 5200 and theVectrex home consoles. The ports of the game were generally received well by the video game press, with the Atari 2600 port of the game winning a Certificate of Merit award for "Best Solitaire Videogame" fromElectronic Games.
McNeil developed a sequel titledFrenzy (1982).Berzerk was influential on later games such asRobotron: 2084 (1982). The game appeared on various "best of" lists and articles from publications likeFlux in 1995,GameSpy in 2002, andRetro Gamer in 2008.
Berzerk is a one or two-player game.[1] Darran Jones ofRetro Gamer retrospectively described its genre as both amaze andshooter.[2] The object ofBezerk is to have the Humanoid Intruder shoot as many robots as possible and escape a maze-like room.[3][4] At the beginning of each room, the Humanoid appears at the middle of one of the four edges and can escape through the exits on another side of the area.[5]
The rooms are littered with robots that move slowly and periodically shoot at the player. The robots can fire in eight directions.[4] The player shoots in the direction of the joystick in one of the eight directions the joystick is placed in. The joystick also controls the Humanoid Intruder's movement. The player cannot move while firing.[3] Bonus points are awarded when each room full of robots is destroyed.[3] A smiley face known as "Evil Otto" will enter from where the Humanoid entered a room eventually and cannot be destroyed. Evil Otto can move through walls and follows the Humanoid Intruder trying to defeat it.[3] Being shot by the robots, touching a maze wall, or having the Humanoid Intruder touch either Evil Otto or a robot will result in the player losing alife.[4]
DIP switches are available in the arcade machine for the operator to adjust some gameplay elements. This allows options to allow the player to get anextra life at 5,000 points, 10,000 points or not at all.[6]By 1981, two models ofBerzerk existed. The first featured three different coloured robots, with the yellow robots who do not shoot bullets, red robots that fire one shot at a time, and white robots that shoot two shots at a time. The next model featured all the previous robots, as well as purple robots that could shoot three or five shots at a time, yellow robots that shoot four shots at a time, and a white robot that can shoot one very fast shot.[7]
Alan McNeil developedBerzerk forStern Electronics. McNeil enjoyed games likeStratego andMille Bornes when younger; he became interested in network-based video games through thePLATO computer system. After college, he made some games on hisSol-20 computer, such as an adaptation ofChase, a game that originated on theDartmouth Time-Sharing System that later appeared as a type-in listing inCreative Computing,Kilobaud Microcomputing,Dr. Dobb's Journal andDavid Ahl's bookMore BASIC Computer Games.[8] How McNeil encounteredChase is unclear: while he remembered seeing the game inByte, it never appeared as a type-in listing in that publication.[8][9] McNeil found work atDave Nutting Associates, where he programmed thecoin-op sequelsBoot Hill andSea Wolf II and portedGun Fight to theBally Professional Arcade.[10] Tired of working on ports and sequels, McNeil requested permission to create an original video game, but management refused to let him, citing his lack of game design experience. This led to McNeil to seek work outside the company.[10]
McNeil found new work at Stern Electronics in 1979 with the promise that, after he fixed a problem on aBally controller board, he could develop a video game.[11][12] Stern was starting to get involved in video games, which led to McNeil doing the artwork, graphics design, programming and debugging of the game himself.[13] He quickly developed a prototype of the game on hisTektronix development system. The first prototype of the game was influenced byChase, such as the theme of robots attempting to kill the player and the robots vanishing if they crashed into each other. He usedFred Saberhagen's seriesBerserker for the title of the game, as the novels are about robot war machines that are out to kill all biological life forms.[11][12] He said in an interview that developing the concept for the game was simple, but described actually making the game as "drudge work".[12]
McNeil wanted the average game to last about three minutes for a novice player. In his initial version, McNeil said, he'd made the robots move too quickly, which made the game become "too hard, even with just six robots; the game favored the robots too much - they would crash into each other occasionally, but the average game time on one life was about six seconds - not good."[11] He tweaked the robots' speeds and adjusted the number of bullets they could shoot as a player entered a new room.[14] Also, initially, the walls in the rooms in the game were not entirely random, which McNeil felt was not immersive. He altered the game so that rooms had aseed generator based on certain x and y co-ordinates within the code.[14]
To incentivize a player to leave a room once the robots were defeated, McNeil created the "Evil Otto" character, a bouncinghappy face.[15] McNeil stated that he despised the happy-face icon and believed its associated phrase, "Have a nice day", was used by "people who didn't want you to have a nice day, but instead wanted to cover themselves in fake righteousness. So I showed it like it was: 'have a nice day while I beat you to death!'".[15] He named the character after Nutting Associates office manager Dave Otto, who enacted several office policies that annoyed the engineers.[16]
During the game, the enemy robots speak audible threats, warnings, and insults whether a player fights or flees the room.[17] McNeil said that the game originally had what he described as "pinball-type sounds",[15] but this was changed when a salesman visited during the development of the game. The salesman was selling a "speech chip"; the chip was intended to assist people withvisual impairments, but the company was trying to expand into toys and games, and, on finding that the voice sounded very robotic, McNeil used it forBerzerk. The speech chip used custom hardware to make hisses and tones that could be assembled into words. McNeil kept the phrases short and applied them to the game to taunt players. He also included phrases forattract mode.[18]
The last major addition was in the final month of production: making the game in color instead of black and white. As a black and white game,Berzerk was originally designed with translucent ink applied to the monitor screen to make it appear to be in color.[18] To make the game truly colored, company engineers created a four-bit color overlay video layer.[19]
Stern premiered the game at theAmusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA) exposition in Chicago which ran between October 31 and November 2, 1980.[1][21] The show had a total attendance of 7,400 visitors.[22]Cashbox reported that the show visitors wouldcrowd intoBerzerk's booth daily for a chance to play it.[21] Early test models forBerzerk had large joysticks, which had to be replaced by standard one-inch-high models created by the Wico Corporation. McNeil said that they changed the joysticks as players were pulling down so hard on them, that the cabinet would tip onto them.[19]
Berzerk began shipping in November 1980, and Stern manufactured and sold around 15,000 units, which was a "sizable hit" for them.[23] McNeil commented that "some games would be played out in a month because kids would get easily bored with them, but they always came back toBerzerk.Pac-Man eventually spelled the end ofBerzerk's dominance, but even then it was earning well for operators."[19]
The success ofBerzerk in arcades led to versions made for Atari consoles and theVectrex.[19]Berzerk was released for theAtari 2600 in August 1982, the Vectrex in October 1982, and theAtari 5200 in February 1984.[24][25][20] The port for the Atari 2600 was developed by Dan Hitchens.[26] McNeil disliked the ports, finding that the games looked cruder than the arcade original, and responded that "Stern Electronics had sold the rights to make the home game to Atari for 4 million dollars - intellectual property capitalism at its finest."[19]
| Publication | Score |
|---|---|
| Electronic Fun with Computers and Games | 4/4[27] |
| JoyStik | 4/5[28] |
| Video Review | 3/4[26] |
Tony Licata, David Pierson, and Dick Welu covered the arcade games presented at AMOA inPlay Meter magazine.Pierson foundBerzerk interesting and commented that the major hindrance on the game was that the player was required to use the joystick for both aiming and movement.[29] Welu wrote that Stern's game did not look attractive, it was still his vote for the best of the show. He complimented the inclusion of Evil Otto and concluded that "people won't be able to quit playing [Berzerk]."[30] Licata listed Atari'sBattlezone (1980) as his pick for the best in the show, while stating thatBerzerk was another game that really stood out. He described the synthesized voices in the game and its attract mode as highlights while praising the graphics, writing that they fit perfectly for the game without detracting from it.[31]
An anonymous reviewer inElectronic Games wrote that following Atari's announcement to release a version ofBerzerk for the Atari 2600, "skepticism ran rampant" that the arcade game would be hard to produce for the system, particularly concerning the poor critical reception for the Atari home console version ofPac-Man (1982).[32] Reviews in the magazinesElectronic Games,Electronic Fun with Computers & Games,The Video Game Update,JoyStik andVideo Review all found the game to be a strong port of the arcade game, withElectronic Games saying that it was "one of the best arcade-to-home translations any company has produced thus far."[32][33][34][35]Electronic Fun with Computers & Games,Electronic Games andJoyStik all complimented the different mazes in the games which added variety to the game.[32][33][35]The Video Game Update also complimented the sounds and visuals, specifically when the Humanoid is electrified by robot fire or by walking into walls.[34] While the Atari 2600 version was described as "generally well regarded" by Craig Grannell ofRetro Gamer, McNeil was not keen on the conversions, finding they lacked many of the original game's refinements.[36]
In the magazineTV Gamer, the publication did not includeBerzerk as one of the best games for theVectrex system while concluding thatBerzerk translated "surprisingly well" as aRasterscan despite Evil Otto not looking right, being mostly made up of straight lines.[37] Video game critic Michael Blanchet found the visuals on the Atari 5200 version of the game as simple which he said he would normally criticize, but found them approrpriate forBerzerk. He found the main drawback was the Atari 5200 controller, which was not as responsive as it could be.[38]
At the 1983 Arcade Awards fromElectronic Games, along withInfiltrate (1982), the Atari VCS version ofBerzerk won the Certificate of Merit award for "Best Solitaire Videogame", being beaten by theColecoVision release ofDonkey Kong (1981).[39]
| Publication | Score | |
|---|---|---|
| Arcade | Atari 2600 | |
| AllGame | 4.5/5[40] | |
| Computer and Video Games | 78%[42] | |
| Eurogamer | 7/10[43] | |
| The Video Games Guide | 3/5[44] | |
Brett Weiss ofAllGame praised the original arcade game for its humor, long-term replayability and its difficulty.[40] Weiss also gave a positive review of the 5200 port reiterating his points, while finding that the Humanoid controlled a bit too slow.[41] A review inEurogamer for the arcade version said that the game lives up to its name, and that its "quintessential surrealism makes it almost impossible not to love the game, and any entertainment medium that makes its audience regularly laugh out loud is worth a place in the top 50."[43]Computer and Video Games found that the game did not have a lot of variety, but was fun nonetheless.[42] Matt Fox in his bookThe Video Games Guide (2012) gave the game three stars finding the graphics "simple but effective" and that it was satisfying to have the robots chase you blindly only to destroy themselves against the walls of the maze.[44]
In 1995,Flux magazine ranked the arcade version ofBerzerk at 55th place on their list of the top 100 video games of all time.[45] In their "Hall of Fame" article on the game, William Cassidy ofGameSpy highlighted that the digitized speech as innovative and complimented the game's personality.[4][46] He found the game tapped into ascience fiction andhorror archetype which was only presented better inRobotron: 2084 (1982) and declared that Evil Otto was one of the greatest video game villains of all time.[46]IGN echoed this, stating that while the character was generally unknown to a younger generation of gamers, Evil Otto was one of the most well-known video game villains during the "Atari days".[47]
Stuart Hunt and Darran Jones ofRetro Gamer includedBerzerk in their 2008 list of the top 25 Atari 2600 games.[48][49] The reviewers commented that it was the best "run-'n'-gun'" game on the Atari 2600 and complimented the animation in the game, specifically the rotating eyes of the cycloptic robots as "menacing and really instilled a feeling that they're scanning the room for a fleshy to kill."[49]
On April 3, 1982, 18-year-old Peter Burkowski entered Friar Tuck's Game Room inCalumet City, Illinois. After playing and beating the high score inBerzerk, he collapsed and was pronounced dead the same day.[50] Reports in newspapers suggested that officials were investigating if the player's heart attack was due to the stress endured while playing the game.[51] Mark Allen, the deputy coroner, said that the autopsy found was due to a scar tissue in his heart which was at least two weeks old, and said that "it's possible that the stress of the games triggered the attack in Peter's weakened heart."[50] The owner of the Friar Tuck's, Tom Blankly, said that the player's heart "had a Time Bomb in it that just happened to go off here. I expected it to hurt business, but if anything, business has been up."[50]
Rumours spread since the death of the player that other players had died since playingBerzerk, which McNeil denied. McNeil responded that the owner of Friar Tucks said that the player ran up the stairs to play the game, was out of breath the moment he arrived and collapsed before even finishing his game.[19]
Along withStratovox (1980) andTaskete (1980),Berzerk was one of the earliest examples of speech synthesis in arcade games.[36][52] Video game critic Michael Blanchet saidBerzerk was one of the first games to combineshoot 'em up withmaze game mechanics and the first to be a "not-so-cute maze game, and it is still the best."[38]Berzerk had influenced various video games following its release such asEugene Jarvis'Robotron: 2084. Jarvis describedBerzerk as being "amazing" and on discovering that if you held down the shooting button, the player would not move, but could still change the direction they fired their weapon. This led him to design the gameRobotron: 2084 with a second joystick to control the firing direction.[53] McNeil said "I talked to [the developers of the Robotron: 2084] Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar when I was considering working for Williams. They are both great guys. I remember Eugene saying that Berzerk irritated them and they wanted to modify it to include some tougher situations. That was the itch they scratched for Robotron. I'm the same way. Something will irritate me and I'll want to improve it or redesign it."[54]Berzerk was also described by authors ofVintage Games (2009) as the unstated inspiration forCastle Wolfenstein (1981).[55] McNeil's game also had variousclone games, such asThief (1981).[56]
Mike Mika developed anAtari 2600 homebrew version ofBerzerk which included the digitized voice that was initially made available in 2002.[57][58] Mika stated that the original game was of his favorite games for the system and when teaching himself how to program for the Atari 2600, he began adjusting palette colors in the games and began testing audio and to apply to it.[59][60][61] Other members of the Atari homebrew community such as Dennis Debro dissembled the original game and found code for the robots to shoot diagonally like in the arcade game, which was later added toBerzerk: Enhanced.[62]Berzerk: Enhanced was released as a physical Atari 2600 cartridge by Atari in 2023.[63]
McNeil left Stern a couple of years afterBerzerk was released. He said that he had been placed in a management position that he found stressful, and was refused a raise.[64] Before quitting, he was offered one last project to make a sequel toBerzerk. As he had leftover ideas that did not make it into the original game, McNeil accepted and developed the sequel gameFrenzy (1982).[65] FollowingBerzerk, McNeil made a handful of other games before focusing on work in animation programming.[54] He died in 2017 of a heart attack.[66]
In 2023,Atari, Inc. announced that they had acquired the rights to Stern's arcade games, includingBerzerk.[67] Sneakybox developed a newBerzerk game titledBerzerk: Recharged (2023) that was published by Atari as part of theirAtari Recharged series.[68][69]Berzerk was re-released asdownloadable content in 2024 for theAtari 50 (2022) compilation, which included the arcade version, the 5200 version, and both the original and voice-enhanced versions for the Atari 2600.[70]
Berzerk: Voice Enhanced [...] Originally released in 2002, the version presented here is Mike's final revision.
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