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Berzerk

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Arcade

You have been sent into a building infested with robots, and must do your best to clear it out. Each rooms has a number of walls through the middle, which restrict your movement. There will be a number of bad guys in the room - on early screens they may be immobile and not shoot at you, but after...

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Developer
Stern Electronics

Released on
1980

Size
1–2 Players

Version
Arcade

Requirements
Arcade

Downloads
Shooter

ESRB Rating
Not Rated

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Description

You have been sent into a building infested with robots, and must do your best to clear it out. Each rooms has a number of walls through the middle, which restrict your movement. There will be a number of bad guys in the room – on early screens they may be immobile and not shoot at you, but after a few levels they become capable of shooting in multiple directions. You can shoot at them in 8 directions, but can’t shoot diagonally while moving. There are gaps at the side of each room, through which you exit, before or after clearing the room (there is a bonus for clearance). You get an extra life every 2000 points.

Berzerk

Overview & History

Released to arcades by Stern Electronics in 1980, Berzerk stands as a towering pillar of early video game history, conceptualized by Alan McNeil. The game’s surreal, dystopian storyline casts the player as an unnamed humanoid trapped in an inescapable labyrinth of electrified maze rooms. To survive, you must navigate over 60,000 unique procedurally generated screens populated by lethal humanoid robots. Adding immense tension to the frantic survival horror is the relentless, invincible grinning menace known as Evil Otto, who mercilessly pursues the player if they linger too long in any single room. Berzerk also holds a distinct place in pop culture history for featuring some of the earliest synthesized speech in gaming, with menacing voice lines taunting the player upon losing a life.

Gameplay Features & Mechanics

Berzerk is played from a top-down, single-screen perspective where the objective is simply to survive and escape each room through one of the four cardinal exits, which immediately transports you to an adjacent, freshly generated maze. The arena is comprised of deadly energy walls that instantly disintegrate anyone—player or robot—upon contact. The player is equipped with a laser gun capable of firing in eight directional angles. Enemies spawn in fixed numbers per room and aggressively track the player's movements while firing lethal energy projectiles. Destructible elements are minimal, meaning players must master fluid hit-and-run tactics, utilizing the maze's geometry for cover. If the player takes too long to clear a room, Evil Otto bounces through walls directly toward them, forcing aggressive pacing.