| Berzerk | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Stern Electronics |
| Publisher(s) | Stern Electronics |
| Designer(s) | Alan McNeil |
| Platform(s) | Arcade Game, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, GCE Vectrex |
| Release date | 1980 (Arcade) 1982 (GCE Vectrex) 1982 (Atari 2600) 1983 (Atari 5200) |
| Genre(s) | Multi-directional shooter/Run and gun |
| Mode(s) | Up to 2 players, alternating turns |
| Input methods | 8-way Joystick, 1 Button |
| Cabinet | Horizontal |
| CPU | Z80 2. A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual that creates Video games A developer may specialize in a certain video Stern is the name of two different but related arcade gaming companies Stern Electronics Inc Stern is the name of two different but related arcade gaming companies Stern Electronics Inc A "game designer" is a person who designs Video games or one who designs traditional games such as Board games Video Games Designer A video game designer In Computing, a platform describes some sort of Hardware architecture or Software framework (including Application frameworks, that allows An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in businesses such as Restaurants Pubs Video arcades and Family Entertainment The Atari 2600 is a Video game console released in October 1977 The Atari 5200 SuperSystem, or simply the Atari 5200, is a Video game console that was introduced in 1982 by Atari Inc The Vectrex is an 8-bit Video game console that was developed by Western Technologies/Smith Engineering. Events Notable releases Mattel releases the Intellivision Video game console. Events December 27 - Starcade, a Video game Television Game show, debuts on TBS in the United States The Vectrex is an 8-bit Video game console that was developed by Western Technologies/Smith Engineering. Events December 27 - Starcade, a Video game Television Game show, debuts on TBS in the United States The Atari 2600 is a Video game console released in October 1977 Events A major shakeout of the video game industry begins By 1986, total video games sales will decrease from US$ 3200 million to US$100 million The Atari 5200 SuperSystem, or simply the Atari 5200, is a Video game console that was introduced in 1982 by Atari Inc See also [[Game classification]] Video games are categorized into Genres based on their Gameplay interaction A shoot-'em-up (also known as shmup) is a Video game genre of Shooter game in which the player controls a vehicle or character and fights large A shoot-'em-up (also known as shmup) is a Video game genre of Shooter game in which the player controls a vehicle or character and fights large A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling A push-button (often simply " button " or " pushbutton " is a simple Switch mechanism for controlling some aspect of a Machine The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit Microprocessor designed and sold by Zilog from July 1976 onwards 50 MHz |
| Sound | TSI S14001A ~20 kHz(Variable), M6840 PTM 5. 0 MHz |
| Display | Raster, standard resolution (Used: 256 x 224), 16 colors, 19 inch |
Berzerk is a multi-directional shooter video game, released in 1980 by Stern Electronics of Chicago. A shoot-'em-up (also known as shmup) is a Video game genre of Shooter game in which the player controls a vehicle or character and fights large A video game is a Game that involves interaction with a User interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. Year 1980 ( MCMLXXX) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1980 Gregorian calendar) Stern is the name of two different but related arcade gaming companies Stern Electronics Inc Chicago (ʃɪˈkɑːgoʊ is the largest City by population in the state of Illinois and the American Midwest of the United States.
Contents |
Description
The player controls a green stick-figure, representing a "humanoid. The term " humanoid " refers to any being whose body structure resembles that of a Human. " 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 joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling A maze is a complex Tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage through which the solver must find a route A robot is a mechanical or Virtual Artificial agent In practice it is usually an electro-mechanical system which by its appearance or movements A player can be killed by being shot, by running into a robot or an exploding robot, coming into contact by one of many electrified walls that make up the maze itself, 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. The smiley, smiley face, or happy face, is a stylized representation of a smiling human face commonly represented as a yellow circle with two dots representing 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. Evil Otto moves exactly the same speed as the player going left and right but he can move faster than the player going up and down. If you have Evil Otto right on your tail, you can escape as long as you only do not have to move up or down. 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.
The player advances by escaping from the maze through an opening in the far wall. 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. In Computer programming, BASIC (an Acronym for Beginner's 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 Robots is a Computer game originally developed for the UNIX operating system and later reproduced as clone games for various platforms The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located Fred Thomas Saberhagen ( May 18, 1930 &ndash June 29, 2007) was a Chicago -born American Science fiction and Fantasy The Berserker series of Science fiction short stories by Fred Saberhagen (1930-2007 is a variety of Space opera in which robotic Self-replicating ("Evil Otto" was named for a disliked fellow-employee. )
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. This was one of the first video games to use speech synthesis.
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. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States 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,".
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—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 1 bullet *White robots that can fire 2 bullets *Followed by Green 3 bullets, Pink 4 bullets, and Yellow 5 bullets *Followed by White 1 Fast bullet. Red 2 fast bullets *Followed by the same sequence firing more fast 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. A DIP switch is a set of manual electric switches that are packaged in a group in a standard Dual in-line package (DIP (the whole package unit may also be referred
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 bowtie" (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 Motorola 6809 is an 8-bit (arguably an 8/ 16-bit) Microprocessor CPU from Motorola, introduced circa 1979 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit Microprocessor designed and sold by Zilog from July 1976 onwards
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. [1] 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. [2]
Legacy
Berzerk was officially ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and Vectrex. The Atari 2600 is a Video game console released in October 1977 The Atari 5200 SuperSystem, or simply the Atari 5200, is a Video game console that was introduced in 1982 by Atari Inc The Vectrex is an 8-bit Video game console that was developed by Western Technologies/Smith Engineering. 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]
Milton-Bradley produced a Berzerk board game designed for two players, one playing Evil Otto and the robots, the other playing the hero. The Milton Bradley Company is an American Game company established by Milton Bradley in Springfield Massachusetts, in 1860 A board game is a Game in which counters or pieces that are placed on removed from or moved across a "board" (a premarked surface usually specific to that game 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 figure were properly positioned in the space, would knock down a robot. Firing the weapon counts as one move.
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 is an Arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution A vacuum fluorescent display (VFD is a Display device used commonly on consumer-electronics equipment such as Video cassette recorders Car radios
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. Frenzy was an arcade game published by Stern Electronics in 1982 The game also served as an inspiration for later, more sophisticated games such as Castle Wolfenstein, Shamus, and Robotron: 2084. Castle Wolfenstein is a stealth-based Computer game, the first of its genre developed by Muse Software for the Apple II. Shamus is a Computer game written by William Mataga and published by Synapse Software. Robotron 2084 (often called simply Robotron) is an Arcade game created in 1982 by the company Vid Kidz ( Eugene Jarvis
In the episode Rose Bowl on the television show News Radio Bill calls Dave Evil Otto ("Like staring into the gaping maw of Evil Otto!"). Television ( TV) is a widely used Telecommunication medium for sending ( Broadcasting) and receiving moving Images, either monochromatic NewsRadio is an American sitcom, originally broadcast from 1995 to 1999 on NBC. Later, in the same episode, Catherine calls Bill Evil Otto.
The "Bishop Of Battle" story from the film Nightmares is based on Berzerk: a game so hard and so frustrating that you can die from playing it. Nightmares is a 1983 film with four tales of horror, starring Emilio Estevez and Lance Henriksen.
In the Futurama episode Fear of a Bot Planet, the robotic policemen along with the loudspeaker use the sound samples of "Get the humanoid!" and "Intruder alert!" from the original game. Futurama is an Emmy Award -winning animated American sitcom created by Matt Groening, and developed by Groening and "' Fear of a Bot Planet " is the fifth episode in season one of Futurama. The episode Anthology of Interest II also references the style of the sound samples ("Fork 'em over! FORK 'EM OVER!"). " Anthology of Interest II " is the eighteenth episode of the third season of Futurama.
In the My Name is Earl episode Joy's Wedding, Darnell "Crab Man" Turner can be seen playing the Atari 2600 version of Berzerk. My Name Is Earl is an American sitcom created by Greg Garcia. The following is a list of episodes of the sitcom My Name Is Earl. My Name Is Earl is an American sitcom created by Greg Garcia. The Atari 2600 is a Video game console released in October 1977 He also has a "Wall of Fame" containing Polaroid pictures of his high scores. Instant film is a Photographic film that is designed to be used in an Instant camera (and with accessory hardware with many professional film cameras
A Cracked.com article entitled "The 10 Most Terrifying Video Game Enemies of All Time" listed Evil Otto as number one, citing the two deaths attributed to the game and remarking that "[H]e is possibly the only video game enemy in history to kill players in real-life" and "Evil Otto watched them die . This article is about the defunct American magazine For the Scottish television series see Cracked (TV series Cracked is a discontinued . . with a smile on his face. "[2]
Clones
Robot attack was an early clone of Berzerk written for the TRS-80 by the small company Big Five software. There were a number of games available for the monochrome TRS-80 computers TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation 's desktop Microcomputer model line sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early It also featured digitized speech.
Talking Android Attack was a clone of Berzerk for the Dragon 32 and Tandy Color Computer, marketed in the UK by Microdeal. This article is about the Dragon home computers. For other uses see Dragon (disambiguation. Microdeal was a British software company which operated during the 1980s and early 1990s from its base at Truro Road in the town of St Austell, Cornwall. As the name implies, it featured several speech clips, including "intruder alert" and "I'll get you next time" - though the quality was far worse than that of the real arcade game.
Robot quotes
The game's voice synthesizer generates speech for the robots during certain in-game events:
- "Coins detected in pocket": During attract mode, specifically while showing the high score list.
- "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!": Spoken when Evil Otto appears.
- "The humanoid must not escape": Heard when the player escapes a room after destroying every robot.
- "Chicken, fight like a robot": Heard when the player escapes a room without destroying every robot.
- "Got the Humanoid, got the intruder": Heard when the player loses a life. (The "Got the intruder" part is about a half-octave higher than the "Got the humanoid" part)
There is also random robot chatter playing in the background, phrases usually consisting of "Charge", "Attack", "Kill", "Destroy", or "Get", followed by "The Humanoid", "The intruder", "it", or "the chicken" (the last only if the player got the "Chicken, fight like a robot" message from the previous room), creating sentences such as "Attack it", "Get the Humanoid", "Destroy the intruder", "Kill the chicken", and so on. The speed and pitch of the phrases vary, from deep and slow, to high and fast.
Songs
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. Year 1982 ( MCMLXXXII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link displays the 1982 Gregorian calendar) Buckner & Garcia are a duo consisting of Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia Pac-Man Fever is a 1982 album recorded by Buckner & Garcia. It is also the name of the first song on that album It is in a ballad form that contrasts with the frenetic nature of the game.
Independent breakbeat artist Phaser 500 recorded a song titled "The Machine Will Get You" comprised entirely of video game sound effects which included the "the humanoid must not escape" quote from the game.
In the Sega Genesis game Vectorman 2, some of of Vectorman's lines are only said when he defeats a boss. The is a 16-bit Video game console released by Sega in Japan in 1988 North America in 1989 and the PAL region in 1990 Vectorman 2 is a Run and gun video game created by Sega and Bluesky Software in 1996 for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis system One is "Chicken, fight like a robot!".
In 1988, the classic acid house track Stakker Humanoid by Humanoid (Brian Dougans) used an Evil Otto sample from the game. Year 1988 ( MCMLXXXVIII) was a Leap year starting on Friday (link displays 1988 Gregorian calendar) Stakker Humanoid is an Acid house track by Humanoid released in 1988 by the London based label Westside Records. Brian Dougans was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1968 He is one half of the British electronica group The Future Sound of London.
Richard D. James recorded a track entitled "Humanoid Must Not Escape," which samples the eponymous robot quote, for alias Caustic Window's 1998 album Compilation. James later reused samples from the video game in the song 54 Cymru Beats on his 2001 album Drukqs under his Aphex Twin alias. Cock 10/54 Cymru Beats is the unofficial name of a promo or CD single by Aphex Twin to promote the album Drukqs. drukqs (sometimes spelled drukQs) is a 2001 Double album by Richard D
References
- ^ MAWS: Berzerk
- ^ Death of a Video Gamer Video Games, October 1982, pp. 14-15
External links
- Berzerk guide at StrategyWiki
- Article at Handheld Games Museum, about unreleased Coleco Berzerk portable
- The Dot Eaters Article featuring a history of Berzerk
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