Color Berserk

The Good
The basic premise of the game is as you would expect- run between rooms, avoid bad guys, don't linger too long or it gets worse. Presented in monochrome in the UK on PAL systems, it used artifact colours on NTSC system. At the time a large number of games were still being churned out in BASIC, so this 100% machine code game was a bit smoother than some competitors. The initial difficulty level is well pitched and the collision detection, essential in games like this, is excellent. It was available only in instant loading cartridge form, the game being one of the first games to come with superb artwork in the black Dragon Data cardboard box, in an era where many games came in dull generic packaging.

The Bad
Essentially the game gets boring quite quickly, and whilst the graphics are fine for 1982, they would be put to shame by later releases on the same system, including ones by the same software house that developed this game. The graphics are not let down by the lack of colour but by imagination- playing the artifact colour version on an NTSC system offers little in the way of improvement. There is just no sense of achievement as the game progresses from one screen to the next similar screen, and there no in game rewards to find to make the journey exciting. The sound is simplistic and the standard below that which we might hope for even given its release date, whilst the set up of each new room is rather ponderous- it feels like a beta release at times. To be fair it is a clone of a not especially exciting game with relatively little depth in the first place, but had it been done a couple of years later I am certain the programmers would have titivated it to a more polished level. Other clone versions of the same game would later be produced that added a bit more to the same basic premise

The Bottom Line
One of the first examples of the packaging delivering more than the game- Dragon Data produced a real mixed bag of software, and this one just whiffed.