Talk:Berzerk (video game)

Popularity of 2600 Version
Was this one of the more popular Atari 2600 games? I wasn't all that old when I got it, but now I think that it was, but I'm just not sure. JesseG 00:05, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
 * I thought the game was great on the 2600, but I don't think it was a raging hit, either.--み使い Mitsukai 16:33, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Player Deaths
I'm a little confused about how the game caused the players' deaths. Was it too intense or something? --NeuronExMachina 20:32, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

The player disintegrated (a la a phaser blast in Star Trek). The article says "each level is designed to be more difficult to finish than the last", while my play experience doesn't indicate that at all-always seemed random. The most challenging were the "bots in a box", where robots spawn in an inaccessible central room, requiring Evil Otto to come and kill them. John DiFool2

I think I read somewhere that the robots in the game were inspired by the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica (the 1970s version, obviously), and that the twirling eye was supposed to be invocative of the Cylon eye. Anyone know anything about that?--み使い Mitsukai 16:33, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Can someone find a source for the foreign language versions? In all the articles I've seen for the game, I've never seen this mentioned, and an Esperanto version seems pretty suspect. Doctor Nick 16:54, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

"In 1986, Stern Electronics and Evil Otto were mentioned as an unwholesome influence on children during the "Suicide Solution" lawsuit of Ozzy Osbourne along with Dungeons and Dragons, marijuana and Prince." = This statement seems irrelevant and I can wager most people have no idea what the "Suicide Solution" is. It should be removed. - anon


 * Agreed. At the very least, it should be moved to the "Problems and player death toll" section. Clayhalliwell 16:00, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I removed it. It had been in the article for months without being sourced.  If somebody has actual references to prove this was said, you may add it back in.  --Darth Borehd (talk) 01:26, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

910 points
What is the significance of earning 910 points. The article does not state so, just gives a strategy for doing so.

The source(s) of the information regarding "player death toll" need to be identified and properly cited (he said, nursing grave doubts that anything even remotely convincing would materialize.)

I feel I should point out the point brought up under the "910 points" section was placed here by Alan McNeil himself. He doesn't really know how to use Wikipedia. As he is the creator of this game, and feels your "death toll" is about 1 kid too high, perhaps someone should source it? If not, I'm going to fix it for him. (Source: Alan McNeil himself. Lives in Kalispell)SoheiFox (talk) 19:21, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

To specify, he is aware of Jeff, and sneds his condolence eternally to the family, but he does not know who this "Peter" person is. As the only source listed is the MAWS, which really isn't a highly accurate source (commonly mislisting creator credits and such) that's not really a source. I figure if in a couple of days nobody has posted a reputable source for this "Peter" person, I'll go ahead and wipe the fictional account from Wikipedia. SoheiFox (talk) 19:26, 13 June 2008 (UTC)


 * You'd better look again. Peter Burkowski's death is not the one being refenced in MAWS, it is referenced in a 1982 article from Video Gamer magazine, an article that is properly cited here with a link to an electronic reprint of the original text. It is Jeff Dailey's death (the one you are not disputing) that is currently linked to a citation on MAWS. --Zequist (talk) 21:23, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Evil Otto in News Radio
Somewhere in season 3, DVD disk 2 I think, the workers are doing peer evaluations. Bill calls Dave "Evil Otto", then someone else calls Bill "Evil Otto". I am not sure if this is an official reference. Can anyone confirm that? I love Berzerk. :)

Ok, I think the episode is called Rose Bowl.

Mancomb 01:58, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Come to think of it, there was a News Radio episode where Dave doesn't study for the SATs because he is too busy playing an arcade game where you have to save "humanoids". The description of the arcade game they play has obviously nothing to do with Berzerk but I do not think it is a coincidence that the word humanoid is used. I have a feeling the writers of the show played Berzerk. I am considering adding these references to the main article (I will mention that it is not verified as an official reference). If anyone objects, please let me know.

Mancomb 15:16, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I have confirmed via the DVD commentary that it is a real reference to Berzerk by the writers of the show. In the commentary for Rose Bowl, around 15:50 one of the writers announces that it's a reference to Berzerk and other commentators laugh at him and say that the only people still listening to the commentary are the fans of the game and don't need to be told. Since I only listened to the commentary to confirm the reference, did I just prove them right? :)

Mancomb 15:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Robot Quotes
"Chicken, fight like a robot": Heard when the player escapes a room without destroying every robot.

It was "Chicken, fight like alien robot" wasn't it? (actually it sounded more like "roblot" - wonderfully primative speech synthesis! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.75.166 (talk) 08:15, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * No, it wasn't. Clayhalliwell (talk) 16:42, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Taunt phrase by robots when player dies
While the article has it as "Got the humanoid", I always heard this as "Delta humanoid, Delta intruder!", which is something of an in-joke (delta of course means a change in some quantity, hence the human has been "changed" to a disorganized cloud of atoms). Puzzled me at the time, in my ignorant youth. John DiFool2 06:38, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Clever, but no, you misheard. Clayhalliwell (talk) 17:21, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Music / Songs section
There is a track by The Aphex Twin (aka Richard D James) under his Caustic Window moniker entitled "Humanoid Must Not Escape" It features several samples from the game, including the phrase "Humanoid Must Not Escape" See this link for details and proof http://www.last.fm/music/Caustic+Window/_/Humanoid+Must+Not+Escape

I think this should be added to the Songs section of teh article —Preceding unsigned comment added by JoyrexJ9 (talk • contribs) 16:35, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Features section: Synthesis & Compression?
Right now the Features starts like this:

Probably the best-remembered feature of Berzerk is that the robots talk. This was one of the first video games to use speech synthesis.

In 1980 computer voice compression was extremely expensive—estimates were that this cost the manufacturer US$1,000 per word; the English version had a thirty-word vocabulary. Stern nevertheless did not spare this expense, and some non-English versions were made, for example a Spanish version in which the robots would say "Intruso alerta" and "El humanoide no debe escapar,".[dubious – discuss]

Wouldn't expensive data-heavy voice that cost per amount stored be "voice recordings," as opposed to "synthesized speech?" Synth speech might cost you $1000/word to develop based on how many words you ended up having in the game, but it seems like a voice synthesizer would have unlimited potential words at fixed hardware cost.

Is this the kind of quibbling that wikipedia is meant to encourage? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.188.233.210 (talk) 00:48, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * No, what the article is referring to is the method in which hardware based speech synthesis was done at the time. These were not recordings, rather many of the "voice synthesis" chips were "dumb chips" that had to be fed actual vocabulary/phonetics.  They "played back" the pre-mapped words, the creation of which was of course expensive.  Some packaged voice synthesis chip sets came with already predefined vocabulary roms of course.  You're confusing things in modern terms vs. how it was referred to at the time, i.e. using hindsight.  --Marty Goldberg (talk) 02:46, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Section of deaths
An entire SECTION has gone missing. The "problems and player deaths" section is no more, and I have no idea why. 92.39.189.2 (talk) 19:10, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

64,000 mazes
I keep hearing this claim that the game has 64,000 different mazes, but how do we know this? Do we know the exact algorithm that the game uses to build mazes? - furrykef (Talk at me) 19:33, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

This means 64,000 SCREENS, i'm pretty sure. and yes the generation algorithm is known. The coordinates (randomly selected on each life) are plugged into a formula to generate the room. 198.153.92.254 (talk) 18:24, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Page title
Good job on reorganizing (disamgiuating, renaming). But it shouldn't be "Berzerk (arcade game)"; it should be "Berzerk (video game)". It only started as a game for arcades; that is a coin-operated, cabinet-based, all-in-one system, intended for business colocation instead of home or educational use. The article's contents, including graphics, expound upon the many versions. I just thought I'd post the fact here just to be polite. Thanks. — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 03:10, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Clones
User Wgungfu please stop removing 'Manik' from the list of clones. Manik is a popular and modern Berzerk clone. That by default gives it notability. Further more notability guidelines apply to the creation of articles, and to the creation of lists. Directly from the guidelines: 'They do not limit the content of an article or list.' It is not appropriate to remove 'Manik' from the list of clones for this reason. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.69.199.234 (talk) 16:04, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Actually no, there are guidelines as well on notability for subject matter - including the guidelines formed by the video game project here. If it's a "notable" clone, there should be plenty of coverage from sites that meet Wikipedia's reliability guidelines (note that blogs are not normally reliable references) stating it's importance as a clone of Bezerk. I.E. differentiating it from the 100s of other clones on mobile devices and desktop over the last decade. Otherwise such additions are viewed here as promotion and promptly removed. Calling it vandalism to remove these as they're always removed is also a violation of WP:Civil. Likewise, if you're in any way related to the game (the author, etc.) it's a violation of WP:COI. Once again, this is not a place for advertising games. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 20:58, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Marty's right on this one. According to consensus reached by the video game project, we only include clones that meet wikipedia's notability guidelines by receiving significant coverage in reliable sources.  If the game is truly as popular as you claim, you should have no trouble finding this coverage.  If you do, neither of us will have any problem with the game being added to the list.  Wikipedia is not a platform to promote products, however, so without sources establishing notability this clone cannot be allowed. Indrian (talk) 22:21, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Arcade image
There's an image of the Atari 2600 box at the top of the page and there's an image of the gameplay further down the page. It was originally an arcade game, so why is there not an image of the arcade game anywhere?

External links modified
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 * I just double checked. The link is live, but the information is not corroborated. It lists the highest "fast bullets" score as 325,270 (as set by Chris Ayra). Meanwhile the non-broken live version (found here) seems to split the "Fast bullets" category into "Pattern Play (Pattern Allowed)", "Random Play (No Pattern Allowed)", "One Life Only - Pattern Play (Pattern Allowed)", and "One Life Only - Random Play (No Pattern Allowed)". Steve Wagner (the person to which the reffed claim refers) is only listed on a "Slow Bullets" scoreboard for "Random Play (No Pattern Allowed)". So the whole thing is a mess... -Thibbs (talk) 00:39, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

reference about otto mozer from chipspeech
this is actually linked to on the chipspeech website but I'll highlight it here;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SkiekH5oRk

Also, chipspeech notes the original synth used for the voice in the process. They took the voice straight from the synth.89.168.11.159 (talk) 09:51, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

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Gameplay original research?
A lot of the text in the gameplay section seems like original research, especially the descriptions of tactics and robot behaviour. Can we get reliable sources for this? Ashmoo (talk) 14:06, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Venture Bros as Popular Culture Reference
Im not sure if this would be considered a reference, so I thought I would bring it up here. The following is for the Adult Swim series The Venture Bros., and how it references the Berzerk game in relation to the sudden death that was reported.

In the episode "A Party For Tarzan" (Season 6, Episode 7), Henchman 21 narrates parts of his youth growing up as a henchman for the Monarch. At the age of 16 he recounts an encounter with Professor Vibrations, a protagonist that fought all his battles with robots and vibration-based firearms. While attempting to hide during battle he accidentally encounters Professor Vibrations, who holds him at gunpoint briefly before suddenly dying of what Henchman 21 believed to be of happiness. He equates the phenomenon back to 1981 where a similar story was heard surrounding the game Berzerk. However in the show, two kids died after achieving high scores: Jeff Daily in 1981, and another unnamed victim a year later. Redterror117 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:14, 7 September 2018 (UTC)


 * No it would not, and thanks for asking. The entire "in popular culture" section had to be deleted as being patently unencyclopedic as per WP:FANCRUFT and WP:TRIVIA. We are required to provide WP:RS secondary reliable sources explaining exactly why a given item is WP:N notable or directly enhances the notability of the subject, not just listing trivia because it exists even if WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. But good news! Go put it at Wikipedia's sister site, wikia, which is exactly the right place for fandom. — Smuckola(talk) 08:13, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

"Indestructible" Otto
Just for the record (would need to get some source to clarify): Otto was not exactly indestructible. It took six or seven shots, but you could definitely kill him. On the down side, a new Evil Otto would form at the original location, and this one moved many times faster than the first. You had to be positioned right at the exit to a level if you wanted to try offing Otto and escaping with your life, but it was possible. Dpiranha (talk) 19:32, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

He is indestructible in Berzerk. Frenzy is the one where you could wear him down with multiple shots. 198.153.92.254 (talk) 18:26, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

"Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Intruder_Alert!_Intruder_Alert!&redirect=no Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached.  cogsan (nag me)  (stalk me) 19:31, 13 June 2024 (UTC)