Berzerk
Encyclopedia
Berzerk is a multi-directional shooter video arcade game
, released in 1980 by Stern Electronics of Chicago
.
." Using a joystick
(and a firing button to activate a laser-like weapon), the player navigates a simple maze
filled with many robot
s, 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, coming into contact with the electrified walls of 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. 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; thus, no matter how close Otto is, the player can escape as long as they can avoid moving straight up or down.
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.
The game is most difficult when the player enters a new maze, as there is only a short interval between entering the maze and all the robots in range firing at the player. For the beginner, this often means several deaths in rapid succession, as each death means starting a new maze layout.
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. Since they shoot from the right and from the top, it is advantageous to shoot them from around walls coming from the left or from the bottom. This creates a substantial disadvantage for the second player for beginning players, since the second player starts on the right side of the screen. This can be corrected by exiting top or bottom on the first screen and then exiting right on the 2nd screen. From then on, the second player can go left to right like the first player starts out. Anybody who can get through the second screen without losing a life consistently and who understands the left-to-right advantage no longer has a disadvantage for starting second. Thus, in championship play, a 2-player game can be used without problem.
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:
In this version of the game, 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 revised version, which had the much larger production run of the two, features a longer color sequence after the cyan robots:
To balance the greatly increased threat from the robots in the second version, Evil Otto's pursuit speed remains at its normal level—half or equal the player's speed—throughout.
In both versions, a free man can be awarded at 5,000 and/or 10,000 points, set by internal DIP switch
es.
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 Dave Otto, security chief at McNeil's former employer Dave Nutting Associates
. According to McNeil, Otto would, "[smile] while he chewed you out." He would also lock McNeil and his fellow employees out of the building to enforce a noon-hour lunch, as well as piping "beautiful" music into every room.
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.
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.
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."
The game's voice synthesizer generates speech for the robots during certain in-game events:
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.
, Atari 5200
, and Vectrex
. The Atari 2600 version features an option in which Evil Otto could be temporarily killed (he always returns). The Atari 5200 version is the only home version to include digitized speech, though the 2600 version was hacked to include speech in 2002.
A portable
version of Berzerk was planned by Coleco (similar in design to their Pac-Man
, Frogger, etc. line of VFD
tabletop games), but was never released.
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 games such as Castle Wolfenstein
, Shamus, Robotron: 2084
, and Xybots
.
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 are plastic yellow rectangular panels that are labeled with the corresponding characters. The hero figure is differently shaped and labeled only on one side. It also has a slot in which a second piece is inserted representing the character's arms, both equipped with laser pistols. Pressing down on the back tab raises the guns and if the figure is properly positioned in the space, it knocks down a robot. Firing the weapon counts as one move.
by the small company Big Five software. It also featured digitized speech.
Talking Android Attack is a clone of Berzerk for the Dragon 32 and Tandy Color Computer, marketed in the UK by Microdeal
. As the name implies, it features several speech clips, including "intruder alert" and "I'll get you next time".
Cybermen is a Berzerk-style game released for the Commodore 64
in 1983.
Cybertron Mission
(Micro Power
) for the BBC Micro
, Acorn Electron
and Commodore 64 from 1984 was heavily influenced by Berzerk.
high score for the Arcade version of Berzerk (fast bullets setting) is 350,340 by Steve Wagner of the USA.
While playing at the "E for All" event in the Los Angeles Convention Center on October 4, 2008, Phil Younger, of Whittier, USA, scored 401,130 points on the slow bullet version of Berzerk, beating the long-standing world record of 178,500 points logged by Ron Bailey of Shelby, USA, on August 30, 1982. With Twin Galaxies
founder Walter Day
in attendance as the official referee, Younger's gameplay employed the controversial "box pattern," which was described in Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade
, a documentary film screened at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival
. The film featured Berzerk rivals, Ron Bailey, Chris Ayra and Joel West who argued the relative merits of using the box pattern. Bailey and West were among a select group of video game superstars who posed for a famous LIFE Magazine group photo at Twin Galaxies in Ottumwa, Iowa on November 7, 1982. This group photograph was the subject of Chasing Ghosts
, which followed the lives of these gamers and, in part, focused on Bailey and West as they discussed their plans to win back the Berzerk crown from Chris Ayra.
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 "he is possibly the only video game enemy in history to kill players in real-life" and "Evil Otto watched them die ... with a smile on his face."
In 2010 IGN
Evil Otto was ranked 78th in "Top 100 Videogames Villains".
.
1988 saw the release of the acid-house
track Stakker Humanoid
, which made prominent use of the "humanoid" and "intruder alert" samples and laser gunshot sound effect
s from the game. The track reached #1 on the UK Dance Chart that year, and came to be considered a classic of Rave
history, as evidenced by the numerous remixes and compilation re-releases in the years since; it has been described as a "hard techno anthem" and an "international acid house hit" in Mixmag
.
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.
(Season 1, episode 8), the character "Crabman" is portrayed, playing Berzerk and scoring high. He afterwards would take a polaroid photograph of the screen, pinning the highscore to his personal wall of fame.
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! Intruder alert!" from the original game. The episode "Anthology of Interest II
" also references the style of the sound samples ("Fork 'em over! FORK 'EM OVER!").
In the The Simpsons
episode "Homer Goes to College
", Homer visits some nerds who mutter "Intruder alert" and "Stop the humanoid".
In the NewsRadio
episode "Rosebowl", news director Dave Nelson introduces an unpopular new employee evaluation system. In the fracas following the adoption of this new system, Dave is referred to as "Evil Otto" by the two news anchors, Bill McNeal and Catherine Duke.
Arcade game
An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...
, released in 1980 by Stern Electronics of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
.
Gameplay
The player controls a green stick-figure, representing a "humanoidHumanoid
A humanoid is something that has an appearance resembling a human being. The term first appeared in 1912 to refer to fossils which were morphologically similar to, but not identical with, those of the human skeleton. Although this usage was common in the sciences for much of the 20th century, it...
." Using a joystick
Joystick
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. Joysticks, also known as 'control columns', are the principal control in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft, either as a center stick or...
(and a firing button to activate a laser-like weapon), the player navigates a simple maze
Maze
A maze is a tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage through which the solver must find a route. In everyday speech, both maze and labyrinth denote a complex and confusing series of pathways, but technically the maze is distinguished from the labyrinth, as the labyrinth has a single...
filled with many robot
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
s, 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, coming into contact with the electrified walls of the maze itself, or by being touched by the player's nemesis, "Evil Otto."
The function of Evil Otto, represented by a bouncing smiley
Smiley
A smiley, smiley face, or happy face, is a stylized representation of a smiling human face, commonly occurring in popular culture. It is commonly represented as a yellow circle with two black dots representing eyes and a black arc representing the mouth...
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. 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; thus, no matter how close Otto is, the player can escape as long as they can avoid moving straight up or down.
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.
The game is most difficult when the player enters a new maze, as there is only a short interval between entering the maze and all the robots in range firing at the player. For the beginner, this often means several deaths in rapid succession, as each death means starting a new maze layout.
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:
- Dark yellow robots that do not fire
- Red robots that can fire 1 bullet
- Dark cyan robots that can fire 2 bullets
In this version of the game, 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 revised version, which had the much larger production run of the two, features a longer color sequence after the cyan robots:
- Green robots that fire 3 bullets
- Dark purple robots that fire 4 bullets
- Light yellow robots that fire 5 bullets
- White robots that fire 1 fast bullet
- Dark cyan robots that fire 2 fast bullets
- Light purple robots that fire 3 fast bullets
- Gray robots that fire 4 fast bullets
- Dark yellow robots that fire 5 fast bullets
- Red robots that fire 6 fast bullets
- Light cyan robots that fire 7 fast bullets
To balance the greatly increased threat from the robots in the second version, Evil Otto's pursuit speed remains at its normal level—half or equal the player's speed—throughout.
In both versions, a free man can be awarded at 5,000 and/or 10,000 points, set by internal DIP switch
DIP switch
DIP switches are manual electric switches that are packaged in a group in a standard dual in-line package...
es.
History
Robots (computer game)
Robots is a computer game originally developed for the Berkeley Software Distribution—a derivative of Unix—by Ken Arnold. In the turn-based game, players are tasked with escaping robots programmed to kill them. Since then it has been reproduced as clone games for various platforms.-Gameplay:Robots...
(Daleks in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
), was the basis for Berzerk, which was named for Fred Saberhagen
Fred Saberhagen
Fred Thomas Saberhagen was an American science fiction and fantasy author most famous for his Berserker series of science fiction short stories and S.F...
's Berserker
Berserker (Saberhagen)
The Berserker series is a series of space opera science fiction short stories and novels by Fred Saberhagen, in which robotic self-replicating machines intend to destroy all life. These Berserkers, named after the human berserker warriors of Norse legend, are doomsday weapons left over from an...
series of science fiction novels.
"Evil Otto" was named for Dave Otto, security chief at McNeil's former employer Dave Nutting Associates
Dave Nutting Associates
David Judd Nutting is a graduate of the Pratt Institute with a degree in industrial design. After leaving the Army Corps of Engineers, he joined the design firm of Brooks Stevens Associates. During his time there he was involved in a wide variety of projects, working on everything from Evinrude...
. According to McNeil, Otto would, "[smile] while he chewed you out." He would also lock McNeil and his fellow employees out of the building to enforce a noon-hour lunch, as well as piping "beautiful" music into every room.
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.
Technology
The game was originally planned around a Motorola 6809EMotorola 6809
The Motorola 6809 is an 8-bit microprocessor CPU from Motorola, designed by Terry Ritter and Joel Boney and introduced 1978...
processor, but problems with the external clock for this CPU led to its abandonment in favor of a Zilog Z80
Zilog Z80
The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes...
.
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.
Speech synthesis
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
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
version had a thirty-word vocabulary. Stern nevertheless did not spare this expense, and some non-English versions were made, for example a Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
version in which the robots would say "Intruso alerta" and "El humanoide no debe escapar."
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 a minor third 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.
Ports and legacy
Berzerk was officially ported to the Atari 2600Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...
, Atari 5200
Atari 5200
The Atari 5200 SuperSystem, commonly known as the Atari 5200, is a video game console that was introduced in 1982 by Atari Inc. as a higher end complementary console for the popular Atari 2600...
, and Vectrex
Vectrex
The Vectrex is a vector display-based video game console that was developed by Western Technologies/Smith Engineering. It was licensed and distributed first by General Consumer Electric , and then by Milton Bradley Company after their purchase of GCE...
. The Atari 2600 version features an option in which Evil Otto could be temporarily killed (he always returns). The Atari 5200 version is the only home version to include digitized speech, though the 2600 version was hacked to include speech in 2002.
A portable
Handheld electronic game
----Handheld electronic games are very small, portable devices for playing interactive electronic games, often miniaturized versions of video games. The controls, display and speakers are all part of a single unit. Rather than a general-purpose screen made up of a grid of small pixels, they...
version of Berzerk was planned by Coleco (similar in design to their Pac-Man
Pac-Man
is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is considered one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games,...
, Frogger, etc. line of VFD
Vacuum fluorescent display
A vacuum fluorescent display is a display device used commonly on consumer-electronics equipment such as video cassette recorders, car radios, and microwave ovens. Invented in Japan in 1967, the displays became common on calculators and other consumer electronics devices...
tabletop games), but was never released.
Stern later released a similar game called Frenzy
Frenzy (video game)
Frenzy was an arcade game published by Stern Electronics in 1982. It was a sequel to the hit 1980 arcade game Berzerk.-Description:Frenzy followed the basic paradigm set by Berzerk: the player must navigate a maze full of hostile robots. The goal of the game is to survive as long as possible and...
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 games such as Castle Wolfenstein
Castle Wolfenstein
Castle Wolfenstein is an early stealth-based action-adventure shooter computer game developed by Muse Software for the Apple II. It was first released in 1981 and later ported to DOS, the Atari 8-bit family, and the Commodore 64.- Description :...
, Shamus, Robotron: 2084
Robotron: 2084
Robotron: 2084 is an arcade video game developed by Vid Kidz and released by Williams Electronics in 1982. It is a shooting game that features two-dimensional graphics. The game is set in the year 2084, in a fictional world where robots have turned against humans...
, and Xybots
Xybots
Xybots was developed by Atari Games in 1987 as an arcade video game, then later released on other platforms. In Xybots, the players must travel through a 3D maze and fight against a series of robots known as the Xybots whose mission is to destroy all mankind.-Arcade:Released worldwide 1987* Game...
.
Milton-Bradley produced a Berzerk board game
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
designed for two players, one playing Evil Otto and the robots, the other playing the hero. The playing pieces are plastic yellow rectangular panels that are labeled with the corresponding characters. The hero figure is differently shaped and labeled only on one side. It also has a slot in which a second piece is inserted representing the character's arms, both equipped with laser pistols. Pressing down on the back tab raises the guns and if the figure is properly positioned in the space, it knocks down a robot. Firing the weapon counts as one move.
Clones
Robot Attack was an early clone of Berzerk written for the TRS-80TRS-80
TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation's desktop microcomputer model line, sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first units, ordered unseen, were delivered in November 1977, and rolled out to the stores the third week of December. The line won popularity with...
by the small company Big Five software. It also featured digitized speech.
Talking Android Attack is a clone of Berzerk for the Dragon 32 and Tandy Color Computer, marketed in the UK by Microdeal
Microdeal
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 features several speech clips, including "intruder alert" and "I'll get you next time".
Cybermen is a Berzerk-style game released for the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
in 1983.
Cybertron Mission
Cybertron Mission
Cybertron Mission is a two-dimensional shooter game, released by Micro Power in 1984 for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron and later ported to the Commodore 64 in the same year...
(Micro Power
Micro Power
Micro Power was a British company established in the early 1980s, best known as a video game publisher but they also produced and sold many types of computer hardware and software through their Leeds...
) for the BBC Micro
BBC Micro
The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, was a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation...
, Acorn Electron
Acorn Electron
The Acorn Electron is a budget version of the BBC Micro educational/home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd. It has 32 kilobytes of RAM, and its ROM includes BBC BASIC along with its operating system....
and Commodore 64 from 1984 was heavily influenced by Berzerk.
Berzerk high score competition
The world recordWorld record
A world record is usually the best global performance ever recorded and verified in a specific skill or sport. The book Guinness World Records collates and publishes notable records of all types, from first and best to worst human achievements, to extremes in the natural world and beyond...
high score for the Arcade version of Berzerk (fast bullets setting) is 350,340 by Steve Wagner of the USA.
While playing at the "E for All" event in the Los Angeles Convention Center on October 4, 2008, Phil Younger, of Whittier, USA, scored 401,130 points on the slow bullet version of Berzerk, beating the long-standing world record of 178,500 points logged by Ron Bailey of Shelby, USA, on August 30, 1982. With Twin Galaxies
Twin Galaxies
Twin Galaxies is an American organization that tracks video game world records and conducts a program of electronic-gaming promotions. It operates the Twin Galaxies website and publishes the Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records, with the Arcade Volume released on June...
founder Walter Day
Walter Day
Walter Aldro Day, Jr. is the founder of Twin Galaxies, an international organization based in Fairfield, Iowa, that tracks high score statistics for the worldwide electronic video gaming hobby...
in attendance as the official referee, Younger's gameplay employed the controversial "box pattern," which was described in Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade
Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade
Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade is a documentary film directed by Lincoln Ruchti about the golden age of video arcade games. The film premiered January 22, 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival and has also been shown at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival, as well as other film...
, a documentary film screened at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival
2007 Sundance Film Festival
The 2007 Sundance Film Festival ran from January 18 until January 28, 2007 in Park City, Utah with screenings in Salt Lake City, Utah and Ogden, Utah. It was the 23-rd iteration of the Sundance Film Festival...
. The film featured Berzerk rivals, Ron Bailey, Chris Ayra and Joel West who argued the relative merits of using the box pattern. Bailey and West were among a select group of video game superstars who posed for a famous LIFE Magazine group photo at Twin Galaxies in Ottumwa, Iowa on November 7, 1982. This group photograph was the subject of Chasing Ghosts
Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade
Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade is a documentary film directed by Lincoln Ruchti about the golden age of video arcade games. The film premiered January 22, 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival and has also been shown at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival, as well as other film...
, which followed the lives of these gamers and, in part, focused on Bailey and West as they discussed their plans to win back the Berzerk crown from Chris Ayra.
Berzerk in popular culture
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 18.A Cracked.com
Cracked.com
Cracked.com is a humor website that was spun off the last attempt to revive Cracked magazine. It began in its current form in 2007.-Attempted relaunch of Cracked:...
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 "he is possibly the only video game enemy in history to kill players in real-life" and "Evil Otto watched them die ... with a smile on his face."
In 2010 IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
Evil Otto was ranked 78th in "Top 100 Videogames Villains".
Music
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 FeverPac-Man Fever (album)
Pac-Man Fever is a 1982 concept album recorded by Buckner & Garcia. It is also the name of the first song on that album. Each song on the album is about a different classic arcade game, and uses sound effects from that game. The album was released as an LP, a cassette, an 8-track tape, and later...
.
1988 saw the release of the acid-house
Acid house
Acid house is a sub-genre of house music that emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style, often with samples or spoken lines rather than sung lyrics. Acid house's core electronic squelch sounds were developed around the mid-1980s, particularly by DJs from Chicago who experimented with...
track Stakker Humanoid
Stakker Humanoid
Stakker Humanoid is an acid house track by Humanoid released in 1988 by the London based label Westside Records.-History of the track:The project behind the track started out with Stakker, a collaborative project by the video artists Mark McClean and Colin Scott...
, which made prominent use of the "humanoid" and "intruder alert" samples and laser gunshot sound effect
Sound effect
For the album by The Jam, see Sound Affects.Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media...
s from the game. The track reached #1 on the UK Dance Chart that year, and came to be considered a classic of Rave
Rave
Rave, rave dance, and rave party are parties that originated mostly from acid house parties, which featured fast-paced electronic music and light shows. At these parties people dance and socialize to dance music played by disc jockeys and occasionally live performers...
history, as evidenced by the numerous remixes and compilation re-releases in the years since; it has been described as a "hard techno anthem" and an "international acid house hit" in Mixmag
Mixmag
Mixmag is a British dance music and clubbing magazine. It styles itself as "the world's biggest selling dance music magazine", with an Audit Bureau of Circulations audited circulation of approximately 21,250...
.
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
Cock 10/54 Cymru Beats
Cock 10/54 Cymru Beats is the unofficial name of a promo single by Aphex Twin to promote the album drukQs. It is also commonly referred to as drukQs Promo or drukQs 2 track Promo. The release was pressed in both CD and 12" vinyl formats, and contains no art other than a sticker on the front of a...
on his 2001 album Drukqs
Drukqs
Drukqs is a 2001 double album by electronic musician Richard D. James, released under his most frequently used pseudonym, Aphex Twin...
under his Aphex Twin alias.
Television
In the TV sitcom My Name is EarlMy Name Is Earl
My Name Is Earl is an American television comedy series created by Greg Garcia that was originally broadcast on the NBC television network from September 20, 2005, to May 14, 2009, in the United States...
(Season 1, episode 8), the character "Crabman" is portrayed, playing Berzerk and scoring high. He afterwards would take a polaroid photograph of the screen, pinning the highscore to his personal wall of fame.
In the Futurama
Futurama
Futurama is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of a late 20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J...
episode "Fear of a Bot Planet
Fear of a Bot Planet
"Fear of a Bot Planet" is the fifth episode in season one of Futurama. It originally aired in North America on April 20, 1999. The episode was written by Heather Lombard and Evan Gore and directed by Peter Avanzino and Carlos Baeza....
", the robotic policemen along with the loudspeaker use the sound samples of "Get the humanoid!" and "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!" from the original game. The episode "Anthology of Interest II
Anthology of Interest II
"Anthology of Interest II" is episode eighteen of Futuramas third season. It originally aired in North America on January 6, 2002. This episode, as well as the earlier "Anthology of Interest I", serves to showcase three "imaginary" stories.-Plot:...
" also references the style of the sound samples ("Fork 'em over! FORK 'EM OVER!").
In the The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
episode "Homer Goes to College
Homer Goes to College
"Homer Goes to College" is the third episode of The Simpsons fifth season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 14, 1993. In the episode, Homer's lack of a college degree is revealed and he is sent to Springfield University to pass a nuclear physics class...
", Homer visits some nerds who mutter "Intruder alert" and "Stop the humanoid".
In the NewsRadio
NewsRadio
NewsRadio is an American television situation comedy that aired on NBC from 1995 to 1999. The series was created by executive producer Paul Simms, and was filmed in front of a studio audience at CBS Studio Center and Sunset Gower Studios...
episode "Rosebowl", news director Dave Nelson introduces an unpopular new employee evaluation system. In the fracas following the adoption of this new system, Dave is referred to as "Evil Otto" by the two news anchors, Bill McNeal and Catherine Duke.
Games
In the popular online game World of Warcraft, Gnomish Alarm-O-Bots call out "Intruder Alert!" when attacked in the same robotic voice as Evil Otto.External links
- The Dot Eaters Article featuring a history of Berzerk
- Berzerk world record holders at Twin GalaxiesTwin GalaxiesTwin Galaxies is an American organization that tracks video game world records and conducts a program of electronic-gaming promotions. It operates the Twin Galaxies website and publishes the Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records, with the Arcade Volume released on June...