Atari 5200

Berzerk

Good Lord this game is hard!! For the uninitiated, Berzerk is all about running through a series of mazes while shooting robots and avoiding the diabolical smiley-face named Evil Otto (possibly the first video game boss?). While your first instinct is to be aggressive, patience is often better rewarded as the robots eventually tend to shoot each other or run into the electrified walls. Occasionally you can destroy all of them without even taking a shot. Avoiding one-on-one confrontations is a good idea, because these guys are accurate shots! Even their explosions will kill you, so keep your distance. The control suffers a bit thanks to the Atari 5200 joystick which keeps you moving long after you want to stop. Nifty voice synthesis delivers classic lines such as "Chicken! Fight like a robot!" Berzerk is always a good time, and with 11 levels of difficulty, this has got to be one of the most challenging Atari 5200 games ever.

You probably think about this as much as I do - and feel exactly the same about it - but I just want to go on record as saying that I’m not really looking forward to the day when robots take over the world. I guess that’s the reason why this game scares the living bejeezus out of me, then. I play Berzerk MUCH harder than I would play a game like Defender, for example. I mean, who would believe ALIENS taking over the world? That’s just plain crazy. But each and every game of Berzerk is like a training exercise for me. I’m going to be ready when the robots try to take over. I’m not going down without a fight, you tin creeps! Fortunately for us humans, Berzerk is here for us now. It’s not only a great exercise, it’s also an awful lot of fun to play.