A forgotten classic of The Golden Age of Video Games. The player controls a humanoid, who must shoot robots and/or escape the room.
Berzerk (Stern Electronics, 1980) was one of the first video games to have voice synthesis, which it put to good use. It compels passersby to play by saying "Coin detected in pocket!"; spurs its computerized cohorts to victory with "Destroy the humanoid! Kill the intruder!"; expresses its consternation with the player's success by saying "The humanoid must not escape!", and, most famously, insults fleeing players with "Chicken! Fight like a robot!"
Also noteworthy for being one of the first video games that afforded the player non-linear ways of achieving goals. The AI robots could be goaded into shooting each other, walking into deadly walls or otherwise killing themselves without the player firing a shot.
Berzerk has even been blamed for multiple deaths. Two of the most infamous cases involved Jeff Dailey and Peter Bukowski, two unrelated teenagers who both played the game in separate arcades only to succumb to heart attacks after achieving high scores, causing Moral Guardians to wonder whether arcade video games were too much excitement for people to handlenote . Even in 1980, most people didn't take these cases seriously.
The game received a sequel, Frenzy (1982), which introduces two styles of robots (skeletons and tanks, with slightly different attack routines; the skeletons are slightly harder to hit from above or below), a temporarily-destroyable Evil Otto, destructible and reflective walls, and "Special" rooms with some feature that adds a twist to the normal game (the Robot Factory constantly sends out new robots, shooting the Power Plant immobilizes all robots in the room, shooting the Central Computer causes all robots in the room to go crazy and destroy each other, and Big Otto gets very very angry if you destroy Evil Otto in his chamber).
Atari acquired the rights to the IP in 2023, and included both the arcade and console versions as downloadable content for the Atari 50 compilation. A reboot of the game, Frenzy Recharged, was developed by Sneakybox Studios and released in 2023 on PC and home consoles. This version updated the graphics and added some gameplay enhancements such as twin-stick movement, optional power-ups, alongside achievements and leaderboards.
May have inspired Castle Wolfenstein and its update, Wolfenstein 3-D, or even Robotron: 2084. Not to be confused with the 1967 British B-movie Berserk! (1967) or to the dark fantasy manga Berserk.
Tropes detected in pocket!
- Ambiguous Gender: The humanoid is always referred to by the robots as "it".
- Ambiguously Human: The player is only called "the humanoid" in all official documentation, as well as by the robots.
- Artificial Stupidity:
- The player can use the other robots to kill each other and make Evil Otto smash the robots. They're slightly smarter in Frenzy (they won't walk into each other, for example), but not by much.
- In the Atari 2600 version, the robots couldn't walk into each other (due to a one-robot-per-scanline technical limitation), but were much more likely to walk into walls.
- Attract Mode: Coin detected in pocket! It was one of the first games in the market to be equipped with a speech synthesizer chip, and it isn't afraid to use the fact to attract players!
- Boss Warning Siren: "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!" (or "Robot attack!")
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: "Coin detected in pocket!"
- Captain Ersatz: The robots' design both in-game and on the cabinet owe a big debt to the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica (1978). The "skeletons" in Frenzy may remind today's players of Terminators, but this was several years before the first film.
- Collision Damage: In Berserk only, touching a robot or a wall will kill you instantly, and robots which walk into walls or each other will also die instantly. Evil Otto will kill anything he touches in both games.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: In Frenzy, when shooting Evil Otto some shots won't register, presumably to deter the kind of dedicated camping that bedeviled some other games of that era (such as Asteroids).
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: The fewer robots there are left on a given level, the faster that they move, until the final one can move as quickly as the player's icon, presumably due a hardware limitation in those old processors. Same with bullets; at higher levels there can be a maximum of 5 on the screen at once among all bots, but if one is left he can shoot all 5 at you.
- Cowardice Callout: Exit a screen before killing every robot and they chastise you for it. "Chicken! Fight like a robot!" Do it enough times in a row, and the robots start calling you "the chicken" instead of "the humanoid" in their background chatter.
- Damage Discrimination: Averted. Robots can accidentally kill each other by way of Collision Damage, running into walls (usually by touching the end of one), and shooting each other. Evil Otto will kill anything he touches, even robots. In Frenzy, you can hit yourself with your own reflected shots.
- Deadly Walls: The walls don't discriminate between player and robot; it is possible to get a robot to destroy itself by walking into a wall. Averted in Frenzy.
- The Dreaded: Even the robots, who normally are after your blood, are afraid of Evil Otto, who is capable of killing them indiscriminately.
- Endless Game: Once you start playing, you have to have at least one life to keep going, with no chance of exiting the entire maze no matter how far into the game you go.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Anything that isn't black on the screen will kill you if you touch it.
- Floating Limbs: The humanoid's neck is missing. If properly timed, a shot by a robot can pass through the gap without killing the humanoid.
- Friendly Fireproof: Luckily averted with the robots, who can be tricked into shooting other 'bots.
- Have a Nice Death: "Got the humanoid! Got the intruder!"
- Hitbox Dissonance: The player character's head and body have two separate hitboxes. A horizontal shot through the gap where the neck would be is entirely harmless.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: You can kill yourself in Frenzy with your own shots if you aren't careful with the reflective walls.
- I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: At lower levels, the robots can easily be manipulated into shooting each other, and sometimes don't even need the player's help.
- Implacable Man: Evil Otto, he keeps coming, and can not be killed. You can only run from him, you can't hide. In Frenzy you can kill him, but he just respawns and comes after you twice as fast.
- Invincible Minor Minion:
- Evil Otto cannot be destroyed, but his appearance forces the player to exit the room. In Frenzy, Otto can be destroyed (it takes three hits); however, each such destruction will result in a new Otto spawning immediately thereafter, and moving faster than the previous one.
- Optionally averted in the Atari 2600 version, one-third of the game variations have no Evil Otto, and one-third feature a killable Otto (he's worth no points, and he respawns after a few seconds). The remaining variations feature invincible Otto like his arcade counterpart.
- Killer Robot: Every enemy that isn't Evil Otto, though in Frenzy, some look like skeletons instead of robots.
- Mood Dissonance: Evil Otto is out to murder you, and will happily destroy any robots that happen to be in his way. He's also a bouncing smiley face.
- My Death Is Just the Beginning: In Frenzy, killing Evil Otto just means he immediately respawns and comes after you twice as fast.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Evil Otto.
- Nothing Is Scarier:
- Much of the game's atmosphere is derived from this.
- After destroying all the robots in a room, you still have to exit it. In the time it takes to get to an exit, Evil Otto can make an abrupt appearance.
- Obvious Rule Patch: In Frenzy, since it would be possible to endlessly kill Evil Otto in certain maps no matter how fast he gets, the devs came up with two fixes: some shots against him won't register, and eventually a SECOND Evil Otto will spawn in the middle of the map and come after you very quickly.
- Oh, Crap!: "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!" (or, in the sequel, "Robot attack!")
- Perpetual Smiler: Evil Otto, though in the sequel Frenzy you can shoot him and his smile will turn into a neutral face, and then a frown.
- Randomly Generated Levels: The stages are all randomly selected from pre-generated stages.note
- Stalked by the Bell: Staying too long in a level causes an invincible smiley face called Evil Otto to start bouncing towards the player. ("Intruder alert! Intruder alert!") Naturally, Evil Otto's touch is lethal.
- Synthetic Voice Actor: In the arcade version, the robots are voiced by text-to-speech.
- Underground Monkey: There is only one type of robot; as the game progresses, it changes color as it shoots more/faster shots. The second ROM version features more robot colors than the first.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: "Berserk" is usually spelled with an S, while this game spells it with a Z.
- You Can Run, but You Can't Hide: The character of Evil Otto, a bouncing happy face, can not be stopped or killed, except in the sequel, and even then his death isn't permanent. You can not hide from him either, you can only run to the next screen.