“Coin detected in pocket!”… Said the arcade machine. “What? Huh. Yeah!” I responded. Sure enough there was so I dropped it into the slot and I became Han Solo, for lack of a better persona, and stalked the corridors of some base flinging fiery ruin at the robots (a cross between Stormtroopers and Cylons, in my mind) that impeded my progress.“Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!”

Each maze-like room cleared I would make a beeline for the doorway. Knowing something dangerous pursued me.“The Humanoid must not Escape!”The danger increased in each room; as the robots begin firing back-often destroying each other. They began to move faster as well and the time I had to clear the room grew shorter and shorter before I was forced to make for the exit.“Kill the Humanoid! Kill the Intruder!”After clearing the robots in one room I dallied too long and my pursuer entered the room. A hideous bouncing smiley face named Evil Otto. A happy fun ball gone wrong! Was he bounty hunter, nefarious genius, or some child’s toy ball gone somehow awry? He’d bounce after me until I reached the exit, impervious to laser fire, and grinning like some 70’s pop icon button. “Have a nice day!” indeed.

“Chicken! Fight like a Robot!”Did the game just taunt me? The pressure increases and I dodge more fire, kill more robots, endure more insults, and Otto returns to plague me. I make for the exit and briefly touch the wall. That’s where I fall, robotic taunts are the last thing I hear.“Got the Humanoid! Got the Intruder!”

Berserk 1980

Stern’s 1980 classic Berserk was always a favorite of mine. With it’s top-down stick figure protagonist, colorful robots with their roving Cylon-like eye, simplistic mazes with their deadly walls, and of course, the psychotic Evil Otto implacably bouncing after you with a sick grin on his face all made for a compelling palette you could apply your imagination to. Oh, also the game talked.

Berserk had one of the best voice synthesizers of its day and it’s been called the first truly successful game to use a synthesizer. Rare, in 1980, was the arcade that didn’t greet you with one of Berserk’s pithy phrases. The game was given 32 words, so it could come up with enough combinations to give the illusion of life (that sort of thing was easier to imagine back in 1980). The novelty attracted gamers, the gameplay, though simple, kept them popping quarters into the machine. The game gave birth to the corridor shooter and you could conceivably draw a line from Berzerk all the way to the upcoming Half-Life if you wanted (with stops along the way including Venture, Castle Wolfenstein, Gauntlet, and modern 3D shooters).

Tapping into the players imagination is what made Berzerk great, that and the voice synthesizer, but some argue the fallibility of the AI was the real stroke of genius. The robots would should each other, run into walls, and could be duped in ways expert players could take advantage of. These tactics, while cheesy at first, became necessary as the difficulty ramped up. Also, the game was capable of creating over 61,000 possible maze configurations, guaranteeing you wouldn’t be able to memorize patterns as you went.

A sequel was released in 1982 that was better in just about every way. Adding different wall surfaces (some would reflect shots, some would collapse), mission goals (destroy the reactor!) and it weakened Otto to where you could fend him off with a few well-placed shots.

Much of my time was spent with the Atari 2600 version of the game. Inferior in every way (it didn’t talk) it still let me imagine myself as Han Solo or Flash Gordon clearing the corridors of evil robots. Something I still do today, only I usually call myself Gordon Freeman or Cate Archer.Controversy
Berzerk is the first game to be connected to an actual death and it happened twice! The first time was in January 1981 when Jeff Dailey died of a massive heart attack right after playing. His score? 16,660. Then, in October 1982 an 18-year old player named Peter Burkowski died of a heart attack as well after playing the game. The Coroner attributed the cause of death to the heart attack, but he implicated the video game as causing the stress. (Sources  John Sellers book “Arcade Fever”)Trivia
* Each of the game’s 32 words cost $1000 to compress.
* The game was originally monochrome, but the success of Defender made them use a color overlay board.
* Berzerk was Stern’s very first video game.

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