- For other uses, see Berzerk (disambiguation).
Berzerk is a multi-directional shooter video game, released in 1980 by Stern Electronics of Chicago. Berzerk screenshot This is a screenshot of a copyrighted computer game or video game. ...
A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual) that creates computer or video games. ...
Stern is the name of two different but related arcade gaming companies. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
Stern is the name of two different but related arcade gaming companies. ...
A game designer is a person who designs games. ...
1980 1980 in games 1979 in video gaming 1981 in video gaming Notable events of 1980 in computer and video games. ...
1982 1982 in games 1981 in video gaming 1983 in video gaming Notable events of 1982 in computer and video games. ...
The Vectrex is an 8-bit video game console developed by General Consumer Electric (GCE) and later bought by Milton Bradley Company. ...
1982 1982 in games 1981 in video gaming 1983 in video gaming Notable events of 1982 in computer and video games. ...
The Atari 2600, released in October 1977, was the first successful video game console to use plug-in cartridges instead of having one or more games built in. ...
1983 1983 in games 1982 in video gaming 1984 in video gaming Notable events of 1983 in computer and video games. ...
The Atari 5200 is a video game console introduced in 1982 by Atari. ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ...
Galaga, a famous shoot-em-up from 1981. ...
Contra, the quintessential run and gun A run and gun (also known as run n gun or for some variants, overhead shooter) is a sub-genre of video games that incorporates elements from shoot em up games and platform games. ...
Centipede by Atari is a typical example of a 1980s era arcade game. ...
Joystick elements: 1. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Button (computing). ...
This arcade cabinet, containing Centipede, is an upright. ...
CPU redirects here. ...
The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Zilog from 1976 onwards. ...
A sound chip is an integrated circuit (i. ...
A computer display is an interface between the computer and the operator. ...
Suppose the smiley face in the top left corner is an RGB bitmap image. ...
The word Berserker can refer to several things: Berserkers, Viking warriors who attacked with a crazed fury. ...
Galaga, a famous shoot-em-up from 1981. ...
Namcos Pac-Man was a hit, and became a cultural phenomenon. ...
1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ...
Stern is the name of two different but related arcade gaming companies. ...
Nickname: The Windy City, The Second City, Chi Town, The City of Big Shoulders The 312 Motto: Urbs In Horto (Latin: City in a Garden), I Will Location in Chicagoland and Illinois Coordinates: Country United States State Illinois County Cook Incorporated March 4, 1837 Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) Area...
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 navigates a maze filled with many robots, who fire lasers back at the player character. A player can be killed by being shot, by running into a robot or an exploding robot, by running into an electrified wall of the maze, or by being touched by the player's nemesis, "Evil Otto." Public hedge maze in the English Garden at Schönbusch Park, Aschaffenburg, Germany A small maze A maze is a tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage through which the solver must find a route. ...
ASIMO, a humanoid robot manufactured by Honda. ...
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 smiley has gone through many incarnations over the years, but it consistently retains the same features. ...
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 against Ozzy Osbourne along with Dungeons and Dragons, marijuana and Prince. BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of high-level programming languages. ...
Robots is a computer game originally developed for the UNIX operating system, and later reproduced as clone games for various platforms. ...
Daleks is a computer game in which the object is to destroy as many Daleks as possible. ...
Fred Thomas Saberhagen (born 1930) is an American science fiction and fantasy fiction author most famous for his Berserker series of science fiction stories. ...
Fred Saberhagens Berserker series is a space opera in which robotic self_replicating machines intend to destroy all organic life. ...
Stern is the name of two different but related arcade gaming companies. ...
This page meets Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ...
Ozzy Osbourne (born John Michael Osbourne, December 3, 1948 in Aston, Birmingham, England) was the lead singer of the pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, popular solo artist, and reality television star. ...
The original Dungeons & Dragons set Dungeons & Dragons (abbreviated as D&D or DnD) is a fantasy role-playing game (RPG) published by Gary Gygax and David Arneson in January 1974. ...
A Cannabis sativa plant The drug cannabis, also called marijuana, is produced from parts of the cannabis plant, primarily the cured flowers and gathered trichomes of the female plant. ...
This article is becoming very long. ...
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. This page is about the arcade game Defender. ...
Features Probably the best-remembered feature of Berzerk is that the robots talk. Berzerk was one of the first video games to use speech synthesis. In attract mode, the game 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 compression was extremely expensive—estimates were that this 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". The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
Another memorable feature is the action of the robots—unlike adversaries in most other contemporary games, Berzerk's robots are known for being noticeably "stupid," killing themselves by running into walls or each other, shooting each other, or colliding with Evil Otto. Advanced players learned how to manipulate this quirk to their advantage to achieve a higher score. Notably, points and bonuses for the player are the same regardless of whether he or she personally kills the robots or not—as long as the robots are destroyed, the points are awarded. This feature also somewhat balanced the indestructibility of Evil Otto.
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
After 5,000 points Evil Otto doubles his speed, moving as fast as the player while robots remain in the maze, and twice as fast as the player after all the robots are destroyed.
 A screenshot of the Atari 2600 version of Berzerk. 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. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (821x507, 22 KB)This is a screenshot of the Atari 2600 version of the game Berzerk. ...
Image File history File links Download high resolution version (821x507, 22 KB)This is a screenshot of the Atari 2600 version of the game Berzerk. ...
The Atari 2600, released in October 1977, was the first successful video game console to use plug-in cartridges instead of having one or more games built in. ...
In both versions, a free man can be awarded at 5,000 and/or 10,000 points, set by internal DIP switches. A DIP switch is an electric switch that is packaged in a standard Dual-Inline Package (DIP). ...
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, referred 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. 1 MHz Motorola 6809E processor, manufactured in 1983. ...
One of the first Z80 microprocessors manufactured; the date stamp says well before July 1976. ...
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.[citation needed] 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 18.[1]
These heart-related deaths were grimly made fun of through visual and audio references to the game in the 2006 movie, Crank. Crank is a 2006 action/thriller film, written and directed by both Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. ...
Legacy Berzerk was later ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and Vectrex. The Atari 2600 version featured an option in which Evil Otto could be temporarily killed (he always returned). The Atari 5200 version was the only home version to include digitized speech, though the 2600 version was hacked to include speech in 2002.[1] The Atari 2600, released in October 1977, was the first successful video game console to use plug-in cartridges instead of having one or more games built in. ...
The Atari 5200 is a video game console introduced in 1982 by Atari. ...
The Vectrex is an 8-bit video game console developed by General Consumer Electric (GCE) and later bought by Milton Bradley Company. ...
Milton-Bradley produced a Berzerk board game designed for two players, one playing Evil Otto and the robots, the other playing the hero. The playing pieces were plastic yellow rectangular panels that were labeled with the corresponding characters. The hero figure was differently shaped and labeled only on one side. It also had a slot in which a second piece was inserted representing the character's arms, both equipped with laser pistols. Pressing down on the back tab raised the guns and if the fugure were properly positioned in the space, would knock down a robot. Firing the weapon counts as one move. Milton Bradley (1836 - 1911) was a game pioneer, credited by many with launching the game industry in North America. ...
A board game is a game played with counters or pieces that are placed on, removed from, or moved across a board (a premarked surface, usually specific to that game). ...
A portable version of Berzerk was planned by Coleco (similar in design to their Pac-Man, Frogger, etc line of VFD tabletop games), but never released. Handheld electronic games are very small, portable devices for playing interactive games, often miniaturized versions of video games. ...
A vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) is a type of display used primarily on consumer-electronics equipment such as video cassette recorders. ...
Stern later released a similar game called Frenzy as a sequel, and a Berzerk coin-op 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 maze games such as Castle Wolfenstein, Shamus, and Robotron: 2084. Frenzy was an arcade game published by Stern Electronics in 1982. ...
Castle Wolfenstein is a computer game by Muse Software for the Apple II. It was released in 1981 and later ported to the PC for DOS, to the Atari 8-bit family, and to the Commodore 64. ...
Shamus is a computer game written by William Mataga for the Atari and Commodore 64 8-bit computer systems in the 1980s. ...
Robotron: 2084 (often simply called Robotron) is an arcade game created in 1982 by the company Vid Kidz (Eugene Jarvis and Larry Demar) for Williams Electronics. ...
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. It is in a ballad form that contrasts with the violent nature of the game. 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Buckner & Garcia are the duo of Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia. ...
Pac-Man Fever is a 1982 album recorded by Buckner & Garcia. ...
References
External links - Berzerk game movie (site uses frames which prevent automatic navigation to the movie page from another website)
- Article at Handheld Games Museum, about unreleased Coleco Berzerk portable
- Berzerk 2005, updated version of Berzerk for Windows
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