Warrior's ROM of the Week:
Berzerk
Stern/URL 1980
For this week's ROM, due to the excitement over being able to actually play Berzerk with full sound, thanks to Alex Judd and MAME Parallel alpha 8, I have chosen Berzerk as the ROM of the Week. These days, to the untrained eye of one more accustomed to the flashy graphics and shallow gameplay of more modern games, such as those in Callus, Berzerk looks downright cheesy in it's rudimentary graphics (for example, if the wall turns green when you are near it, it's not some sort of warning, as many have believed over the years, but as a result of a really hacked-together last minute addition of color to what was supposed to be a black-and-white game originally. For more information on the speckled past of Berzerk, some history can be found below.) In fact, by all accounts, Berzerk should have been just another one of the mediocre games to be relegated to the back corner with all of the Space Invaders clones.
What really set Berzerk apart from all of the other games is that it was one of the first that would actually talk to the player. Using only thirty words combined into different phrases to taunt the player as he
How to Play:
The gameplay in Berzerk is deceptively simple. You (the green guy) are trapped in a maze filled with evil robots who tirelessly seek your untimely demise, along with their insiduous leader, known simply as "Evil Otto," just your average evil-minded bouncy-ball with a smiley face who seems to follow you all over the place (Mommy! He followed me home! Can I keep-BZZZZZZZOT!) Your job is to blast the things to smithereens. Fortunately, these robots have all of the strength and durability of a Ford Pinto, and contact with anything (each other, walls, shots or Otto) will treat these mechanical menaces to an early retirement plan in the scrap heap. That's the good news. The bad news is that you, being human and all, somehow managed to forget your super-powered robot-be-gone suit to the whole thing, and you yourself are about as durable as the average Yugo in a high-speed freeway collision. contact with any robot (even while they are exploding,) any of their shots, the walls or Evil Otto himself will result in your untimely demise. And of course, just to make sure that you don't hang around too much in one place, or Otto is going to come get you.
The scoring is simple as well. In a nutshell, you earn 50 points for each robot that meets it's demise (whether you somehow had a hand in it or not.) When all of the robots on screen are gone, you receive a bonus of 10 points for each robot that was on the screen to start with. Evil Otto, quite simply, cannot be destroyed. Once a room is cleared, exit quickly before Otto has a chance to come get you. Once you leave a room, you enter another one, but cannot exit from the same way you came in.
Information:
- Although originally intended to use a Morotola 6809E processor, design limitations forced the game to be recoded to a Z80 processor (see the article below for the gory details on this and more.) There are two ROM sets supported in MAME. The more common one (in the berzerk1 directory) is what most people have played in the arcades, since the now rare original ROM set (berzv1 in MAME) was deemed too hard for a lot of people. It is rumored that there is also a ROM set for Berzerk that is in black and white, as was originally planned in development.
- (From the KLOV:) According to one of the designers, Tony Martin, Berzerk suffered a bit in
sales due to frequent breakdowns of it's original giant sized optical 8 way joystick. Approximately 4200 orders were canceled by distributors and operators whose
machines were frequently down from the opto-stick. Stern issued free WICO leaf switch sticks to operators after they had so much trouble with the optical stick, but
this still hurt sales. Berzerk shares a rather chilling distinction of being the first known game to be blamed for an actual player's death. In January 1981, Jeff Dailey, a
19 year old Berzerk player, died of a massive heart attack right after playing his favorite game. His score was 16,660 (a very respectable score but disturbing for
obvious reasons). Berzerk's sequel Frenzy was produced in the form of a kit (rare, less than 500 made) an upright (11,430), and cocktail (839).
- For more info on the history of Berzerk, and some of the more interesting tidbits on it's development, here is a copy of an article that appeared in alt.games.video.classic some time ago, describing some of the recollections of the devlopers of the game.
Previous ROMs of the Week:
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