This is one of those video games that actually could use a movie adaptation. With little to no official lore, it leaves a lot more room for the studio to use their imaginations to flesh things out and maybe even answer questions we never even thought to ask while playing the game! Who is this humanoid protagonist? What events led up to their current situation? What are their motives? Why have they intruded Evil Otto's base? And what about Otto himself? What happened that made him evil? What are his motives? Why does he rely on all these robots? What does he have against our hero/heroine? On top of all this, what's the setting? Where is this facility located? And of course, the title, _Berzerk._ How does that tie into everything? I wish I could come up with answers, but I'm terrible at thinking, so...yeah, I think I need outside ideas...
The instruction manual for the Atari 2600 version provided some background info. It's been over 30 years since I read it, so I don't recall everything.
In a distant age, in the final battle, when the robots have conquered Earth, one stood... He chose the path of defiance. In his battle for survival he found no peace and, with boiling blood, he scoured the human fields seeking liberation from the robotic overlords who farm us for biofuel. ...and those that tasted the burn of his plasmagun designated him: *Berzerk!*
Noticed there was no chance to implement the 'bulletproof necktie' trick; look closely at the green humanoid and you'll see the head and body- no neck, so if a enemy shot passes thru it-No harm to your player. However ..this is harder to do than the 'lance in the pterodactl's mouth' trick in the Joust arcade game !
Loved this game in the arcade. The graphics, sound, and concept, even though simple, had a purity and clean look that made it stand out. Something about it made it seem more futuristic at the time than other games. I think it still holds up really well today.
The new, enhanced version of Berzerk for the Atari 2600+ includes the bot which enable the robots to fire on the diagonal. However, it's not always consistent. The cartridge also includes a couple of the arcade game's spoken lines.
I played this game years after it came out (for reference I was born in '98) and despite the clunk that comes with age, it's still a great time. Even got my little sister to try it. She seemed to enjoy it.
You can't ever have a true longplay of this game, since I think it has 65,536 levels. Evil Otto is responsible for the deaths of 2 gamers in the 80's. He watched them die... and just smiled.
Akira625 2 teenagers were playing in a arcade trying to get a high score to put there initials on the leader board. One was a kid whom right after accomplishing that died of a heart attack right afterwards he was 19, same thing for the other person in 1981.
Akira625 no records have been found the 2nd person actually existed. the 2nd death was most likely a rumor started and this person never even existed. when you look up his name a man by the name did exist but died a year earlier in a car crash before the game was even out. So only one person actually died while playing this game and it was unrelated to the game.
This game is quite eerie if you think hard enough about the setting of gameplay. The lack of music, early speech synth, and the three people that died shortly after playing this doesn't scare me all that much. What does scare me is the fact that there is literally no ending. You can play as much as you want, but Evil Otto will always end up killing you either by himself or his robots. Unless you count the kill screen as the "good" ending, the humanoid certainly won't escape.
This is proof that you don't need fancy ass music and graphics to still have a captivating game. There was a sequel to this called Frenzy too. Never liked that one as much though.
Over 40 years old and still cool!! I love watching the robots kill each other trying to destroy the humanoid. Always cracked me up how stupid they were!
I would love to see a modern adaptation of this game. There is so much unexplored territory insofar as lore surrounding it. There are so many directions your imagination can go. Who is this guy? Where is he? Why is he there? What the hell is Evil Otto?
Ah, memories. I remember plunking quarter after quarter into this one. I think I made it to level 4 once. I was way better at Exidy's "Venture". I don't know why, but the two remind me of each other.
I spent literally HOURS on this in the arcades back in the '80s Lolol. Come to think about this, this could have been a forerunner to the 'Big Brother State' we are all living in now.
This game's concept is awesome. Exporing almost endless mazes while fighting with robots and being chased by the immortal evil otto. I hope there are moer shooters like this today, not the smash TV stylr twin stick shooters.
Why do the robots say at the end "Get the humaoid not the intruder?" I remember this game said it a lot when the smiley face jumped after you like the smiley face is the intruder but not the humanoid. So you you died but did not beat the last level or what?
The robots have a few different names for you. If you exit a level without killing all robots, they'll start calling you chicken until you kill them all
I always thought the intruder was the smiley face because when the smiley face appears the robots say, "Intruder alert. Intruder alert." And then it sounds like they say, "Get the humanoid, not the intruder."
I remember playing this back in 1980 on one of the rarer, black&white screen arcade cabinets. According to Wikipedia, the earliest Berzerk arcade cabinets had black&white screens.
Loved the arcade game. Played the living heck out of it on the Atari 2600. Sadly, AtariSoft never ported it to the TI-99/4A. The speech synthesizer would have made this the best arcade conversion game.
I was typing, Berzerk, in the search, looking for a recap of the anime. Then, I see a video for the game that we affectionly called, Intruder Alert! Thanks for trip!
I played this game (stand up, arcade-style, old school) in I think, 1979/80? It was at an A&W restaurant close to my house. Rode our bmx bikes (mine a Diamondback) another friend had a Mongoose another had a Redline and we all would have killed for a PK Ripper. I've always thought that a movie to remake BUT it would've taken someone like Ridley Scott (not Rob Zombie) to really pull it off.... "Logan's Run". HAD TO ADD: As well, that A&W was about two miles from Atari's original headquarters (off of Lark Avenue in Los Gatos, Ca.).The first Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater (on Kooser in San Jose, Ca.) was about ten miles away BOTH owned by Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari & Chuck E. Cheese. Finally, "Scarab" Datsun Z car V8 conversion was also just in Campbell neighboring Los Gatos. Steve Wozniak , co-founder with Steve Jobs of Apple Computers lived in the hills above Los Gatos AND 24 miles over the hill was Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, where "The Lost Boys" was filmed in 1987.
It was such a simple layout, yet an intense game, and you only had a certain amount of time to destroy all the robots in each maze stage before one of the goofiest looking, yet deadliest known enemies around, _Evil Otto_ - would relentlessly converge upon you!
It seems that was a placeholder at first while something more ominous-looking could be devised (considering the bouncing, maybe some sort of spider-bot?). But Stern thought the idea of a smiley face inducing such dread was hilarious, so the placeholder became the real deal.
This looks simple but damn it if it wasn't hard. Whoever was playing was a badass. Great use of walls and friendly fire. I dumped a LOT of quarters in to this game at the arcade as an 11-12 year old boy.
The TRS-80's version was "Monster Maze" - no bouncing happy face, but the monsters/robots could shoot through the walls. So could you, but you had to be very precise. Sometimes the best strategy was to line up the robots so they get in the line of fire of another and be killed by friendly fire.
one of my favorite Atari games back in the day..one thing that set it apart for me was the fact that the robots could accidentally kill themselves and eachother
![Atari 2600 Longplay [057] Berzerk](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rOcujzXf-B4/mqdefault.jpg)
The sound of numerous constant laser blasts is somehow very calming.
"Coins detected in pocket." Awesome.
Sometimes it`s blatant lie.
@@5434345 lol yeah. what if you don't have coins?
found you
How does it know?
THE HUMANOID MUST NOT ESCAPE.
CHICKEN. FIGHT LIKE A ROBOT.
CHARGE IT.
INTRUDER ALERT INTRUDER ALERT.
GOT THE HUMANOID, GOT THE INTRUDER.
COIN DETECTED IN POCKET.
Don't forget "Kill the chicken"
Is Otto saying this
TARGET
"Chicken, fight like a robot".
"Coin detected in pocket."
That end of game was brutal. Well done.
The vocoderized voices are cool still to this day.
This game killed people
@@matts_mystic6995 its not the game
Otto's voice sounds like the Esperanto Google translate voice.
..Trust me, you don't wanna hear it.
@@matts_mystic6995 its not the fucking game that killed people. its the fact that they played for too long so health problems showed up.
People seem to forget that this was the first ever game to feature voice acting. Not Sinistar. Even if Sinistar doesn’t sound anywhere as synthetic.
Holy shit I didn't even know
It probably also might be the first video game to actually kill someone.
Nope. Stratovox was the very first game with synthesized speech.
@@eins2001 DIGITIZED, NOT SYNTHESIZED.
This game gave me an adrenaline rush as a kid...some how it captured my mind inside this game...this and gorf..the sounds and voices.
and a little bit after this game like in 1982, came sinistar, another cool game with voice!
you are a good humanoid
I remember Gorf! 😂
The game started to drop a beat at 7:01
THERE'S A BERZERK REMIX WAITING TO HAPPEN XD
=)
@@SHINBAXTER have you never heard humanoid by stakker humanoid? Badass acid house from 1988
@@SHINBAXTER Aphex Twin - Humanoid must not escape
This is one of those video games that actually could use a movie adaptation. With little to no official lore, it leaves a lot more room for the studio to use their imaginations to flesh things out and maybe even answer questions we never even thought to ask while playing the game! Who is this humanoid protagonist? What events led up to their current situation? What are their motives? Why have they intruded Evil Otto's base? And what about Otto himself? What happened that made him evil? What are his motives? Why does he rely on all these robots? What does he have against our hero/heroine? On top of all this, what's the setting? Where is this facility located? And of course, the title, _Berzerk._ How does that tie into everything?
I wish I could come up with answers, but I'm terrible at thinking, so...yeah, I think I need outside ideas...
Oh yeah you're Genius.
Overthinking at its finest.
The instruction manual for the Atari 2600 version provided some background info. It's been over 30 years since I read it, so I don't recall everything.
@@edrice2621 I'm sure you could look some of it up on the internet, Ed.
The name Berserk came from a series of novels known as the Berserk series in which robots began attacking humans.
Classic game. I never had the pleasure of playing it in an arcade, but I did play it on an Atari. Evil Otto is such a bastard, haha.
SmashTom
Have you heard about these stories
It's not the same.
This was my favorite game as a kid in the 80s. I never got anywhere near as good as this guy.
What if:
That green stick-figure is Doom-Guy's precursor?
I'm not really seeing the connection?
Kira Kanashimi they both go pew pew with a gun
In a distant age, in the final battle, when the robots have conquered Earth, one stood...
He chose the path of defiance. In his battle for survival he found no peace and, with boiling blood, he scoured the human fields seeking liberation from the robotic overlords who farm us for biofuel.
...and those that tasted the burn of his plasmagun designated him: *Berzerk!*
how?
What if our real friends are the evil Otto's we meet along the maze?
Interesting how if you take too long, a smiley face appears and bounces after you, but your thought is oh god oh god the overseer has arrived.
Yes! 😂😂
That looks like my workplace......
(Computer Voice) "The Intruder must not escape!"
Noticed there was no chance to implement the 'bulletproof necktie' trick; look closely at the green humanoid and you'll see the head and body- no neck, so if a enemy shot passes thru it-No harm to your player. However ..this is harder to do than the 'lance in the pterodactl's mouth' trick in the Joust arcade game !
dont you wish we could "Way-Back-Machine to this??"
BTW im not a CIA agent
Loved this game in the arcade. The graphics, sound, and concept, even though simple, had a purity and clean look that made it stand out. Something about it made it seem more futuristic at the time than other games. I think it still holds up really well today.
After playing it on the Atari 2600, the arcade machine was a shock in that the bots can fire diagonally too! They couldn't in the 2600.
The new, enhanced version of Berzerk for the Atari 2600+ includes the bot which enable the robots to fire on the diagonal. However, it's not always consistent.
The cartridge also includes a couple of the arcade game's spoken lines.
I played this game years after it came out (for reference I was born in '98) and despite the clunk that comes with age, it's still a great time. Even got my little sister to try it. She seemed to enjoy it.
Here's a game that needs the Arcade Archives treatment.
1 like = 1 Berzerk Robot Saying: "Chicken, Fight like a Robot!"
Planet of the Z-Bots.
YES! I knew it wasn’t just me! 😎
I remember playing this, great game, got the adrenaline flowing...
I would play this fucking game for hours.
"Chicken,Fight like a robot"
So Evil Otto is the original "vibe check" joke...
Damn 12 year olds believing evil otto actually kills people when somebody actually got into a car accident and another had a undiagnosed ccondition
Yeah I used to believe it but it's impossible.
Played this game for hours on my Atari 2600 around 1982.i couldn't get enough of it.
I bought my Atari 2600 in 1982 and Berzerk was the first, separately sold cartridge I purchased.
Same. Got it Christmas day, along with Asteroids and Space Invaders.
I would love to see this game in a 7/11 again, just to see the kids reaction (and not to mention to play it.)
Yes this was a great game back in the day.
They'd love it. It's basically just a violent 4-bit version of "Among us"
Any kid would play it.
Pong: beep... boop
PAC-MAN: waka waka
Berzerk: INTRUDER ALERT INTRUDER ALERT
I wasn't expecting that voice to come out of the silence. It almost gave me a heart attack!
You can't ever have a true longplay of this game, since I think it has 65,536 levels.
Evil Otto is responsible for the deaths of 2 gamers in the 80's. He watched them die... and just smiled.
***** Right.
***** What do you mean?
Akira625 evil otto also said GOT YOU HUMANOID, GOT THE INTRUDER
Akira625 2 teenagers were playing in a arcade trying to get a high score to put there initials on the leader board. One was a kid whom right after accomplishing that died of a heart attack right afterwards he was 19, same thing for the other person in 1981.
Akira625 no records have been found the 2nd person actually existed. the 2nd death was most likely a rumor started and this person never even existed. when you look up his name a man by the name did exist but died a year earlier in a car crash before the game was even out. So only one person actually died while playing this game and it was unrelated to the game.
This game is quite eerie if you think hard enough about the setting of gameplay.
The lack of music, early speech synth, and the three people that died shortly after playing this doesn't scare me all that much.
What does scare me is the fact that there is literally no ending. You can play as much as you want, but Evil Otto will always end up killing you either by himself or his robots.
Unless you count the kill screen as the "good" ending, the humanoid certainly won't escape.
Fun Fact:
The robots were modeled after ones seen in Disney's The Black Hole (1979) and Target Earth (1954).
You know, it might just be me, but this looks pretty fun and I’d play it even now
Happy 40th birthday to “Berserk”!
I completely had forgotten about this game. What a blast from the past.
Every time Evil Otto would come in a room....The old Partridge family show intro should be playing in the background.....😄
The granddaddy of all shooter, right here.
This is proof that you don't need fancy ass music and graphics to still have a captivating game. There was a sequel to this called Frenzy too. Never liked that one as much though.
Spent hours on this game back in those days. Nothing better then getting to that exit 😆 I wish I could go back .. great memories !
Over 40 years old and still cool!! I love watching the robots kill each other trying to destroy the humanoid. Always cracked me up how stupid they were!
If they just walked into each other they blew up. Who designed them?
This is the game that made stern popular.
Believe it or not, stern still exists to this very day!
Stern is still around really?
Atari owns Stern and is doing a remake
I would love to see a modern adaptation of this game. There is so much unexplored territory insofar as lore surrounding it. There are so many directions your imagination can go. Who is this guy? Where is he? Why is he there? What the hell is Evil Otto?
Try Berzerk Recharged for the VCS
Ah, memories. I remember plunking quarter after quarter into this one. I think I made it to level 4 once. I was way better at Exidy's "Venture". I don't know why, but the two remind me of each other.
Cool vid, but, 1980, wow, has it really been that long,,,,
@Quixotes ok 8 year old
Yep! Time flies when you're having fun. :)
I spent literally HOURS on this in the arcades back in the '80s Lolol. Come to think about this, this could have been a forerunner to the 'Big Brother State' we are all living in now.
Lmao what
Why are the robot voices so damn cool!!! 🤖
This game's concept is awesome. Exporing almost endless mazes while fighting with robots and being chased by the immortal evil otto. I hope there are moer shooters like this today, not the smash TV stylr twin stick shooters.
Greatest adoption of the berserk manga ive seen
Can't wait for a crossover between the arcade and the anime.
Stern used the same synthetic voices from its pinball machines on this. Very cool.
This was absolutely the greatest game in the 80's
Whoever is playing this is a lot better than I was in 1982 😅😅😅
My favorite Atari game by far I love the sound effects intruder alert saw intruder must not escape
After 37 years. Evil Otto still gets me lol
The sound design in this game is phenomenal! Even now it's a unsettling.
Why do the robots say at the end "Get the humaoid not the intruder?" I remember this game said it a lot when the smiley face jumped after you like the smiley face is the intruder but not the humanoid.
So you you died but did not beat the last level or what?
MaharlikaAWA they say “get the humanoid” “get the intruder” it just sounds slightly off.
@@DNSKILL0 but isn't the smiley.face bouncing thing an intruder?
@@MaharlikaAWA No, he's there to stop you hanging about for too long on one screen
The robots have a few different names for you. If you exit a level without killing all robots, they'll start calling you chicken until you kill them all
I always thought the intruder was the smiley face because when the smiley face appears the robots say, "Intruder alert. Intruder alert."
And then it sounds like they say, "Get the humanoid, not the intruder."
Got the Humanoid; got the intruder.
I remember playing this back in 1980 on one of the rarer, black&white screen arcade cabinets. According to Wikipedia, the earliest Berzerk arcade cabinets had black&white screens.
These games, although crude by today’s standards, STILL get your adrenaline pumping.
I love this game. I also remember playing it on the Atari 2600. I wonder if Hamster will make a Switch port.
Atari is doing a remake for modern consoles
This game was the bane of my existence.. even at 10 years old.. ughhhh
Loved the arcade game. Played the living heck out of it on the Atari 2600. Sadly, AtariSoft never ported it to the TI-99/4A. The speech synthesizer would have made this the best arcade conversion game.
What is that smiling face chasing you at the end of the level ?
Evil Otto
Evil Otto
My heart rate rise immediately when the game began for some reason...
what's that smile 🙂 which is jumping to reach the player after killing all the bad guys but he is running away from it ?
Evil Otto never trust him
1:29 "Attack the humanoid! Manoid!"
I was typing, Berzerk, in the search, looking for a recap of the anime. Then, I see a video for the game that we affectionly called, Intruder Alert! Thanks for trip!
1 of my favs back in the day along with kangaroo, which I found on playstation store, any chance of finding this
Childhood memories. Thanks.
Oh I had that game on my 2600. It was awesome!
yes, so did I. it was a very good port of the game. didn't have the robot voices but, the gameplay was nearly identical.
I loved this game back in my day. Maybe apocryphal, but I heard this was the first use of a synthesized voice in a commercial platform.
One of favorites from back in the day
They need to come out with an updated version of this game.
some of them just self-destruct explode for no reason, it seems.
The walls are deadly to them, also they can shoot each other.
I played this game (stand up, arcade-style, old school) in I think, 1979/80? It was at an A&W restaurant close to my house. Rode our bmx bikes (mine a Diamondback) another friend had a Mongoose another had a Redline and we all would have killed for a PK Ripper. I've always thought that a movie to remake BUT it would've taken someone like Ridley Scott (not Rob Zombie) to really pull it off.... "Logan's Run".
HAD TO ADD:
As well, that A&W was about two miles from Atari's original headquarters (off of Lark Avenue in Los Gatos, Ca.).The first Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater (on Kooser in San Jose, Ca.) was about ten miles away BOTH owned by Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari & Chuck E. Cheese. Finally, "Scarab" Datsun Z car V8 conversion was also just in Campbell neighboring Los Gatos. Steve Wozniak , co-founder with Steve Jobs of Apple Computers lived in the hills above Los Gatos AND 24 miles over the hill was Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, where "The Lost Boys" was filmed in 1987.
The Arcade version is the best one.
I remember the sound volume for this game being so loud. Everyone could hear it.
It was such a simple layout, yet an intense game, and you only had a certain amount of time to destroy all the robots in each maze stage before one of the goofiest looking, yet deadliest known enemies around, _Evil Otto_ - would relentlessly converge upon you!
Is this the game that one Futurama episode referenced?
Yep
oh man what a throwback. Good ol' Evil Otto: The ORIGINAL "Death Smiley".
I played this in arcades in my pre-teens back in My native Silver Spring MD, worth it.
This so needs to come back to current consoles🎮.
This is where ALL my lunch money went!! I never knew a "Bouncing Happy Face", could be so evil...
It seems that was a placeholder at first while something more ominous-looking could be devised (considering the bouncing, maybe some sort of spider-bot?). But Stern thought the idea of a smiley face inducing such dread was hilarious, so the placeholder became the real deal.
Evil Otto was his name-O
Is there any fix that you ae aware of that will allow me to firs on an diagonal as shown in the video of Berzerk?
The episode of Futurama where the robots discover Fry as human and they use this still audio cracks me up still.
Can you please shut it with that Futurama jeez... no one cares about that boring show...
Then why the reboot tard?
This is part of creepypasta stories
This looks simple but damn it if it wasn't hard. Whoever was playing was a badass. Great use of walls and friendly fire. I dumped a LOT of quarters in to this game at the arcade as an 11-12 year old boy.
I played this game as a kid for hours and hours and finally beat the game. I was exhausted! I soon gave up gaming after that! 😂
My favorite game from back in the day.
Mine was Missile Command but this was a close second.
The Humanoid Did Not Escape.
THIS GUY ROCKS..I WOULD BE UP ALL NIGHT WATCHING THIS GUY AT THE ARCADE WITH FLYNN ON TRON
I first played this in late November, 1980. I have never escaped Otto, since then!!
The TRS-80's version was "Monster Maze" - no bouncing happy face, but the monsters/robots could shoot through the walls. So could you, but you had to be very precise. Sometimes the best strategy was to line up the robots so they get in the line of fire of another and be killed by friendly fire.
I absolutely LOVED this game back in the 80s! (though I was rotten at playing it)
I remember this video game a loooooong time ago when I was a little kid, in a video game arcade in Los Angeles.
It sounds like the Flight of the Conchords song “The Humans Are Dead”.
Did someone die from a heart attack over this 🤦♂️
ya
This is Berger than garage fortnite. Just Masterpiece. Powerfull green buddy.
How to play this game?
one of my favorite Atari games back in the day..one thing that set it apart for me was the fact that the robots could accidentally kill themselves and eachother
Devil Otto was Dave Otto a McNeil's colleague.
Então esse é o jogo que matou 2 pessoas ?
Que conseguiram o recorde mundial.
So what company made Berzerk?
*Por donde lo habrá jugado me pregunto?..*