Amok

The Good
Berzerk was a popular game when it came out in the early ‘80s. The object of the game is to navigate your man around a maze of rooms, shooting as many robots as you can while avoiding running out of lives and crashing into walls. The highlight of the game was the built-in speech synthesis that added atmosphere. It was ported to the Atari consoles as well as the Vectrex, and numerous clones appeared on other systems.

One of these clones is Amok by UMI (not to be confused with the Odyssey² version that carried the same name) developed for the VIC-20 computer and released on cassette. The game starts out with instructions on what you need to do. It specifically mentions that you must shoot robots to survive, but they are actually droids because they move around rather than walk. This is where you can select options that alter the droids’ behavior. At the higher options, the droids will move a lot faster and be more likely to follow you.

The game itself is very faithful to its arcade parent. Using the joystick or keyboard, you move your stick figure around the maze, shooting droids and making your way to the next room. The droids are well designed, and the sound effects sound futuristic, being right up there with the sounds in those old cartoon shows. The only thing missing from the game is Evil Otto, but this seems to make the game easier as you don’t have a time limit and you are free to shoot every droid in the room if you choose to do so.

The Bad
There could have been much more animation in the game, such as screen transitions between rooms and your character getting electrocuted by the walls.

The Bottom Line
Although Amok is missing some features of its arcade parent, the game is still a joy to play every now and then, and anyone with a VIC-20 should have this in their collection. I just wish that UMI ported their version to other computers.