Berzerk (video game)

This article is about the 1980 video game. For the video games based on the Berserk manga series, see Berserk: Millennium Falcon Hen Seima Senki no Shō and Berserk and the Band of the Hawk.
Berzerk
Arcade flyer
Developer(s)Stern Electronics
Publisher(s)Stern Electronics
Designer(s)Alan McNeil
Platform(s)Arcade, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Vectrex
Release
  • Arcade
  • December 1980
  • Atari 2600
  • August 1982
  • Vectrex
  • October 1982
  • Atari 5200
  • February 1984
Genre(s)Maze, shooter
Mode(s)1-2 players alternating turns

Berzerk is a video game designed by Alan McNeil and released for arcades in 1980 by Stern Electronics of Chicago. 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 on boards, 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 and attract mode. Along with games like Stratovox (1980), it was one of the earliest games to feature speech synthesis in arcade games.

Stern premiered the game at the Amusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA) exposition in Chicago in late 1980. On its public release, the arcade game shifted over 50,000 units; an amount that Craig Grannell of Retro Gamer described as a "massive achievement."[1] The game went on to receive ports for the Atari 2600, Atari 5200 and the Vectrex 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" from Electronic Games.

McNeil would develop a sequel titled Frenzy (1982). Berzerk was influential on later games such as Robotron: 2084 (1982). The game would appears on various "best of" lists and articles from publications like Flux in 1995, GameSpy in 2002, and Retro Gamer in 2008.

  1. ^ Grannell 2008, p. 48.