Description
You have been sent into a building infested with robots, and must do your best to clear it out. Each rooms has a number of walls through the middle, which restrict your movement. There will be a number of bad guys in the room - on early screens they may be immobile and not shoot at you, but after a few levels they become capable of shooting in multiple directions. You can shoot at them in 8 directions, but can't shoot diagonally while moving. There are gaps at the side of each room, through which you exit, before or after clearing the room (there is a bonus for clearance). You get an extra life every 2000 points.
Part of the Following Groups
User Reviews
There are no reviews for the Atari 2600 release of this game. You can use the links below to write your own review or read reviews for the other platforms of this game.
The Press Says
Forums
There are currently no topics for this game.
Trivia
Atari 8-bit port
The game is also in circulation for Atari 8-Bit computers, this is however believed to be the result of a leaked prototype and not an official release in the early '80s.
Board game
In 1983,
Milton Bradley adapted this video game
into a boardgame.
Comic book
Atari's 2600 release on
Berzerk came with a comic book of
Atari Force #2.
Here is that comic at AtariAge.com.
Death
The coin-op version of
Berzerk has the distinction of being associated with the first ever "video game death". Jeff Dailey, a 19-year old, suffered a heart attack in January 1981 shortly after playing the game.
References to the game
The famous phrases from the game "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!" and "Get the humanoid!" are sampled in the
Futurama episode "Fear of a Bot Planet" where they are heard over a loudspeaker and by robots are chasing Fry and Leela. Also in
The Simpsons episode "Homer Goes to College", Homer enters a residence where nerds are working at computers and one says "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!" while another says "Stop the humanoid!".
Song
Berzerk was popular enough to have a song inspired by it on the full-length
Pac-Man Fever album -
Goin' Berzerk.
Voices
The coin-op arcade version of
Berzerk had digitally recorded dialogue. There were 16 spoken words stored on a small microchip, and they were put together in sequences to create complete sentences such as "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!" and "Destroy the humanoid!" This was technologically groundbreaking, but consider the cost. Almost a thousand dollars per word.
Awards
- Retro Gamer
- Issue 46 - #10 in the "Top 25 Atari 2600 Games" poll
Information also contributed by
Guy Chapman,
LepricahnsGold,
Maw,
PCGamer77,
Pseudo_Intellectual and
Scaryfun
