Berzerk
About This Episode
Released in 1980, Berzerk is an iconic arcade game forever etched into video game history. Known for its pioneering use of voice synthesis, intense gameplay, and relentless enemy robots, it captured the hearts and quarters of countless gamers. So, in this Backtrack, we take on Evil Otto in his maze of robots as we celebrate over forty years of the arcade classic, Berzerk.
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Show Notes
- Berzerk History » videogamehistory.fandom.com/wiki/Berzerk
- Berzerk: The Killer Arcade Game? » bit.ly/3VWUpNQ
- Play Berzerk Online » bit.ly/3Pf3aiu
- More Berzerk History » www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/berzerk
- Berzerk Review » bit.ly/40kWANX
- Email the show » podcast@genxgrownup.com
- Visit us on YouTube » GenXGrownUp.com/yt
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker | Transcript |
Jon | Welcome back Gen X grown up podcast listeners to this, the backtrack edition of the Gen X grown up podcast. I am John joining me as always, of course, is Mo. Hey man. |
Mo | Hey, how’s it going? |
Jon | You know it’s not a show without George, hey George. |
George | Hey, how’s it going guys? |
Jon | Released in 1980, Berserk is an iconic arcade game forever etched into video game history. Known for its pioneering use of voice synthesis, intense gameplay, and relentless enemy robots, it captures the hearts and quarters of countless gamers. |
Mo | Mm hmm. |
Jon | So in this backtrack, we take on evil auto in his maze of robots as we celebrate over 40 years of the classic arcade game Berserk. And it’s kind of funny story. This is the first backtrack of the new year. And we actually forgot to schedule something for this episode. So we started chatting amongst ourselves going, oh, what can we do easily? Pick an arcade game that we can play. let’s do what We know about that. Just dig up some things. So this was a surprise to us as well as it is to you. We’re going to talk all about Berserk. |
Jon | ah in this episode. Before we do that, time for some fourth listener email. If anybody writes in, that’s not one of the three of us, you are our fourth listener. And the fourth listener this time around is, and I’m not making this up, Schlumpy, Schlumpy wrote us the subject line. |
George | Mmm. |
Mo | Something. |
George | Must be a Drew Barrymore fan. |
Jon | I think so, yes. Subject line of Shlumpy’s email is game show backtrack. You guys remember that backtrack we did all about the TV game shows? |
Mo | Oh, yeah. |
Jon | That was a great popular one. ah It tells you Shlumpy’s digging in the back catalog, so more power to you. Thank you. Here’s what Shlumpy says. Hi guys, love the show. Thank you. I recently listened to the game show backtrack and I too used to love watching them with my grandmother. |
George | Mm. |
Jon | every time i pretended to be so pretended Every time I pretended to be sick and stayed home from school, it was awesome spending time watching with her. It was funny how she really seemed to care if they lost the game on the prices, right? |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | You know, that’s something we only just touched on. Yeah, I think we did talk about staying home from school and watching the game shows and stuff. But I hadn’t really thought about. Yeah, there was like like an uncle or an aunt or a grandparent or something that you didn’t spend time with during the day, usually. |
Jon | And now you kind of did in their world, watching the shows they watched. |
Mo | yeah |
George | and Yeah. |
Jon | There’s that that getting to know somebody aspect of game show experience that I hadn’t considered. But you’re right, Schlumpy. That’s cool. Slumpy goes on to say, by the way, in a related topic, a great movie about the future of game shows is The Running Man. |
Jon | please so Yes, it is. |
Mo | Well, yeah. |
Jon | Yeah, it’s an awesome one. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | No doubt. I especially love that the star of the movie was none other than Richard Dawson from Family Feud fame. |
Mo | Yep. |
Jon | Yeah. |
George | ye |
Mo | yep |
Jon | You know what I learned recently? I always thought it was funny and clever that they had a game show host as the host of the game show in that movie. |
Mo | Right. |
Jon | And I mentioned that to somebody and they’re like, it’s not that amazing. Richard Dawson was an actor before he was a game show host. |
George | He was back in the cowboy days. |
Mo | That’s right. |
Jon | And I’m like, I didn’t think of that. |
George | Yeah. |
Jon | Yeah, it didn’t occur to me. |
Mo | Yeah, he’s also he was in Hogan’s Heroes, too. |
Jon | I just think of him as the game show host. But of course he had a career before that. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | So he was uniquely qualified because he had both been an actor and a host. So yeah, he’s great in the running man. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | yeah In fact, there’s a remake coming, isn’t there? |
Mo | So I think so. |
Jon | Yeah. |
Mo | the ah I don’t know if you guys heard, but you said price is right. Did you hear about like the most ah embarrassing moment on price is right? A woman in a wheelchair won a treadmill. |
Jon | recent or no. |
Jon | Oh. |
George | Oh, wow. |
Mo | and they And they just went with it. |
Jon | And so what did they what they do? They just let her sell it or yeah. |
Mo | they just So she decided to keep it because she says, I need something to hang my clothes on like everybody else. |
Jon | Yeah, we can do. |
Mo | So nice. |
Jon | like everybody else does with their treadmill. Ouch, that’s, that is too close to home. |
George | yeah |
Jon | ah Let’s see, Shlumpy wraps it up saying, keep up the great work, Shlumpy. Thank you, we appreciate you for writing in. |
Mo | That’s awesome. |
Jon | Thank you for that. Yeah, yeah, that I remember the game show backtrack was was very popular when we published that. It had to be a couple of years ago now. |
Mo | Yeah. yeah |
Jon | We’re glad that you found it and enjoyed it. Listen, fourth listener, if you would like your email featured here on the show, it’s drop dead easy. All you got to do is hit us up via email at podcast at Gen X grown up.com read every single one of them and most of them just like schlumpy’s will eventually make the show. All right. That good business in the rearview mirror. We’re gonna jump into this backtrack all about berserk after this quick break. Stick around. Okay. |
Mo | Okie dokie. |
Jon | The arcade game Berserk, is look if you grew up in arcades, we’re not going to tell you a whole lot. You don’t already know. You’re going to reminisce with us. But in the off chance you’re listening or you’re a younger person or just didn’t spend time in arcades, Berserk is a classic arcade game where you play as a humanoid intruder who has to escape maze-like rooms that are littered with robots that slowly move toward and shoot at you. |
Jon | The player can shoot at the robots and try to escape the room. And along with the robots, a smiley face known as Evelado appears to hunt down the player within each room. And he’s actually like, you can’t kill him. |
Jon | All you can do is run from it. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | is Yeah, it’s cripplingly scary. |
Mo | Oh, absolutely. |
Jon | Yeah. I had nightmares about Evelado. |
George | You know, I, I did play this game a little bit, not, I don’t think quite as much as either of you, but the one thing that always hit me when I was playing it, and maybe it was because of what I was a fan of at the time, the robots for whatever reason, I just always assumed that they were Cylon, you know, fighters. |
Jon | Silence. Oh yeah. |
Mo | Yes. |
George | yeah I don’t know that they, yeah surely they hadn’t even watched Battlestar Galactica to put them in this thing in block form, but that’s what they came across to me as. |
Jon | I agree. |
Mo | Oh yeah. |
Jon | Yep. |
Jon | Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. |
Mo | Oh, for sure. And actually, you know, the game was inspired by this old text graphics game called Robot. I don’t know if you guys ever played it, but it was like a turn based one. |
Jon | I don’t think so. |
Mo | It made like a grid like with text, you know how they used to do the grid and you can move your character one of the directions and they had robots that would come after you and they would just move closer to you every time you moved like they would move a step closer. |
Jon | Mm hmm. |
George | Mm hmm. Right. |
Mo | So you had to try to make them crash into each other. |
George | ah Oh, nice. |
Jon | Hmm. |
Mo | And it was a game that was actually in like one of the first couple of byte magazines was one of those that you could type in yourself. |
Jon | Okay. |
Jon | Oh, that you could type in. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | Oh, nice. Yeah. |
Mo | So, but he said that’s what we got. That was one of the inspirations for the game. |
Jon | Yeah. |
Mo | And apparently the. |
Jon | and He, I’m sorry. |
Mo | No good. |
Jon | I was gonna jump into the Allen McNeil. |
Mo | Go. Yeah. |
Jon | Yeah. |
Mo | Go for it. |
Jon | And the he you’re referring to, Mo, is Alan McNeil. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | ah He worked at Stern. He was an employee there. and He based the game, allegedly, reportedly, off of a nightmare that he had about battling evil robots. |
Jon | ah yeah he He says, ah it I just pulled something up. Sorry. Yeah. Okay, there it is. Now, while working at Stern, Neil was assigned to fix some technical problems on some of their boards. Now, that both they did video games, and of course Stern, huge for pinball, right? So he worked there. And while he was doing the work, Stern allowed him to develop his own game based on this idea that he had around the know original old game you’re talking about here. He started to develop it initially with robots, and then later he added the walls. Those weren’t even part of it. |
Jon | And then finally, the evil auto character to expand on the gameplay and give you that sense of urgency to kind of push you to keep going. |
Mo | Right. |
George | you know you talk about stern and this game came out in 1980 45 years ago this year but just like you said stern is far more known for their pinball machines but i would argue this might be their greatest arcade success like even over a lot of their pinball machines back then now their pinball machines that they’re doing now are |
Jon | Mm hmm. Yep. |
Mo | Oh, yeah. Probably. |
Jon | Hmm. Oh, that’s the top. Yeah. Yeah. |
George | Top-notch games. I mean you look at like the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Deadpool games, the John Wick game that just came out this past year. |
Jon | Mm hmm. Crazy. |
George | Stern is killing it in the pinball world. But back then in the 80s, I think this might have been a bigger success for them than any of their pinballs were back then. |
Mo | Oh, yeah, for sure. And, you know, the other thing is it really impressed me. I still, to this day, I look at what these people created with such limited resources, you know, and he had 8K total to write this thing in. |
Jon | Right. Hmm. |
Mo | I mean, that’s the thing that just blows me away that they could, that they, they could even come up with something in that limited space, especially writing in the Sembo language. I mean, like, Oh my God, this just seems insane to me. |
Jon | but Like this this audio file of this podcast you’re listening to, you could fit like a thousand berserks into. It’s just it’s ridiculous. |
George | ah |
Jon | yep ah Now, another facet that Berserk is well known for, and we’ll talk more about it a little bit later, and that’s the speech synthesis. I mean, I think anybody who say Berserk and they go on Twitter alert, check and fight like a robot, all that stuff. |
Mo | Oh yeah. |
George | Hmm. |
Jon | Now what happened was Stern Company was visited by a salesman who was promoting their speech chip. And when McNeil took a look at it, he’s like, oh, I gotta to put this in my game. I’m gonna use these voices, not only to taunt the player during a game, but to attract a player, like a sideshow barker, coin detected in pocket, right? |
George | Right. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | It would talk to you when it wasn’t being played. |
George | Yeah. |
Jon | And I think without the speech synthesis, this would have been a fine game. |
Mo | Sure. |
Jon | With it, it became holy shit game. |
Mo | Yeah. |
George | Oh yeah. I mean, it’s very much like some of the, I keep going back to pinballs, some of the pinballs that came out around that time started using speech synthesis as well to attract players over to the game. |
Jon | Mm hmm. |
Mo | Mm hmm. |
George | And I think it’s because they needed a way to stand out in the arcade. When you’re walking through an arcade in the early 1980s, you’re hearing all these crazy sounds. |
Mo | Oh, so many sounds, yeah, yeah, bombarded. |
Jon | Oh, yeah. |
George | Now we can pick out every video game in us in an arcade soundscape probably, but back then it was still, you know, overwhelming a little bit and they needed to pierce through all of that to get you to bring your quarter over to that machine. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | Is that weird? |
Jon | Yeah. |
Jon | yeah |
George | I think Berserk might’ve done it better than just about anything else in 1980. |
Jon | Something’s talking. I hear blips and bloops. And then a guy talking like, holy crap. |
Mo | Yeah. Actual words. |
George | Yep. |
Mo | Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. You know, unfortunately, McNeil passed away in 2017, you know, still very, very young. |
Jon | Oh, just a little while ago. |
George | Hmm. |
Mo | But, you know, but again, I think he he definitely left a legacy with this game for sure. |
Jon | He left the mark. Yeah, yeah, well he did we’ll talk later. He did this one and he did the sequel frenzy, which we’ll talk about a little bit later. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | yeah So he has two classics under his belt. ah Now Stern premiered Berserk at the AMOA, which is the Amusement and Music Operators Association, like a big trade show, you know, an expo in Chicago late in 1980, the year it came out. |
Jon | On its public release, the arcade game shipped over 50,000 units. |
Mo | two |
Jon | Now, I don’t work in the gaming industry, but according to this guy, Greg Grinnell, according to this guy, Craig Grinnell of Retro Gamer, he said that was a massive achievement in terms of, I would suppose for a new game especially, it has no reputation beyond, I just saw it for the first time and sold 50 grand. |
Mo | Yeah, wow. |
George | Hmm. |
Mo | The, uh, you know, the title of the game, this is my book nerdism coming in here was, uh, was a reference to it. |
Jon | Nerdery Unleashed. |
Mo | It was from a book by Fred Sabrehagen, which I read actually is called berserk. There’s a whole series of, but it had to be like 14 books that he wrote based on this world, where it was all based on this race called the builders. |
Jon | Mm hmm. |
George | Oh. |
Mo | They, there’s some precursor race built these autonomous machines to attack their enemy, but they didn’t have a way of stopping them. |
Jon | Aha, started attacking them. |
Mo | so So the machines killed them too, and they self-replicate as well. So that was the basis behind it. |
Jon | Oh. |
Mo | And the and and they’re still following their prime directive, which was destroy all life. So they’re spreading out through the galaxy. And his book was about different people meeting up with these berserkers. |
Jon | the They are Cylons, George, they really are. |
George | Right? |
Mo | Yeah. |
George | I was gonna say, so you mean the game wasn’t based on the fictional heavy metal hit from the Clerks movie Berserker? I thought for sure. |
Mo | ah |
George | It was retroactively time jumped back from Clerks. |
Mo | Maybe. |
Jon | Right. Right. Right. Time travel inspiration. Why not? |
Mo | A couple other facts I found out about looking into this was that um when he first did the game, it was you died like super fast. Like it was one of these games that he died in the first minute. And the people who bought the game like that, like they wanted that feature because the more quarters, but he thought it was cheap. |
Jon | More quarters. Yeah. |
George | Right. |
Mo | And he actually had a formula in his head that he said that like he thought about a length of a movie. So how long should a quarter last if you’re dividing it out for a length of a movie at the time? |
Jon | Oh. |
George | Okay. |
Mo | And he said it came to about three to five minutes is what he said. |
Jon | Interesting. |
Mo | You know, because movies back then were like three dollars, you know, four dollars, something like that. |
George | Right. |
Mo | um So he won his game to at least last two or three minutes because he wouldn’t feel like people got their money’s worth when they played. |
George | Sure. |
Jon | I’ve always heard, I never knew where it came from. I have always always heard the theory that arcade games wanna give you three to five minutes of gameplay and then kill you to get into the quarter. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | But I and never heard the equation compared like a movie, I guess, hey, it’s entertainment. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | Three bucks, divide it out. no Make your money, whatever it takes. |
Mo | And apparently I saw an interview that he gave that that it, there are a finite number of rooms, 65,536 of them exactly. If you want to know the number. Um, and there aren’t a 256 by 256 grid that wraps around. |
Jon | It’s a computer number. |
Mo | Now who could ever get to an edge? I have no idea. |
Jon | Oh. |
Mo | Like how you ever get there, but it did keep track of which rooms you went into. So you went back, it would be the same room you left. |
George | Wow. |
Mo | Because he said he wanted to make sure that you had that feeling that you were traveling through something. |
Jon | Really? |
Jon | i don’t I think I just always assumed that, look, here’s an entrance, here’s an exit, here’s some robots, tell the computer to draw some random walls and make sure they don’t cut me off and otherwise it was good. |
Jon | I had no idea that they actually built, especially in 8K, why would you, maybe maybe the math and calculations to randomize it was more than just making a bunch of rooms. Maybe, I don’t know, maybe they’re algorithmically created. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | I had no idea. ah learn something, even I learned something new. |
George | You know, one thing I’m kind of interested in, and I don’t know why this wasn’t an automatic selection, but we have recently been falling in love with the TV series Secret Level. |
Mo | Oh, yeah. |
Jon | Mm hmm. |
George | and It’s kind of modeled after the Love, Death and Robots thing, but it’s all about ah video games that we all love. |
Mo | Oh. |
Jon | Yep. |
George | Why is Berserk not a game featured in the original first season of this TV series is beyond me. |
Mo | oh |
Jon | Mm hmm. |
George | This seems ripe for an animated TV series episode treatment. |
Mo | Yeah, it’d be perfect. |
Jon | you know And Secret Level has been doing interesting things with the licenses that it has. |
Mo | Ooh. |
George | mm hmm. |
Jon | It’s not just saying, here’s an animated version of the game you played. It’s taking some risks. |
George | Right. |
Jon | And so they could definitely take this world that Berserk is one of the simplest looking and structural games and the rules are so simple. Guy versus robots, bouncing smiley faces after you. |
Jon | And you could wrap anything else around that and make an interesting story. Now you have, look, you have, you have an antagonist and a protagonist and some henchmen. Go nuts. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | You can do whatever or you want with those. |
Mo | Yeah. Jeez. |
Jon | Huh? |
Mo | You’re right. That’s a no brainer. |
Jon | Come on season two. Let’s get it. |
Jon | All right. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | I’m gonna let that go right there. I think that was fun. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | Yeah. Artificial. |
Mo | I can jump in this next one and I’ll toss off to you, John or George. |
Jon | Thanks. Perfect. Yeah. Thank you. |
Mo | If you want to pick up. |
Jon | Yeah. They’re talking more about, yep. |
Mo | Yeah. All right. |
Mo | The thing about berserk is that it really did a lot of like new things that weren’t seen, especially in 1980. And one of the ones you mentioned earlier was that it had speech synthesis. |
Jon | Mm hmm. |
Jon | Yeah. |
George | Mm hmm. |
Mo | I mean, that was just groundbreaking. |
Jon | Yeah, it was. And it wasn’t the first game. ah There was another game. I think it was, I think it was a stern game too, called Stratovox. Came out the same year, a little bit earlier in the year. |
Mo | Don’t remember that one. |
Jon | um But they’re, they’re credited with being the ones that brought speech synthesis to arcade games. |
Mo | Okay. |
Jon | um And, and like you said, George, you’re walking the arcade and it’s just like, you hear that, that robotic talking, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah. And you know intuitively what game is over there. You know what’s coming. |
Jon | Especially it used to have like three or four machines of the same kind around a pillar or the wall. |
George | Right. Yeah. |
Mo | Yeah, yeah, yeah. |
Jon | You get a few of those and it’s just noise over there. |
Mo | It’s having conversation. |
Jon | And it’s cool. It’s awesome. And aside from the bullets and the speech and the explosions, we shoot a a robot. There’s no sound, there’s no music. There’s no like a thump, thump, thump, thump of space invaders or whatever. |
Mo | Yeah, it’s true. |
George | Oh, yeah. |
Jon | It’s just that speech that drives it, which is why I think when you have ports that don’t have it, you go, I don’t know. |
Mo | In shooting, yeah. |
Jon | Now, something I didn’t know is that Berserk has an option to change the language. |
George | Yeah. |
Mo | Oh, that makes sense. |
George | I mean, that makes sense if you’re gonna sell it in other countries. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | Of course it does, but I never thought of it, right? Oddly no. You would think, you know well, what are the company? Maybe in Japan where it’s hugely popular, maybe that’s localization. No, here are the options. English, French, Spanish, and German. Those are the four languages you can set it to. |
George | That totally makes sense to me. I wouldn’t see this as Japan because Stern’s not a Japanese company. Stern’s an American company out of Chicago. |
Jon | They are right, but I think they would ship them over there. That’s why I would think, but I guess that’s a good point. They’re not a Japanese company. |
George | I don’t think they, I mean, back then, I don’t think many games went from us to Japan and certainly not a lot came from Japan. |
Jon | Yeah. |
Jon | Oh. |
Mo | Yeah, that’s true. |
George | Didn’t have the arcade gaming stuff as much as we did. I think Atari was an American based at that point. |
Jon | Yeah. |
George | This 1980 not 82 83. |
Jon | Mm hmm. Okay, that’s a good, I hadn’t thought of that, hadn’t thought of that. |
Mo | Yeah, yeah, true. |
George | Yeah. |
Jon | and so This is so early, this is the earliest game we’ve talked about in a dedicated backtrack. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | ah The other other thing that’s really cool is that the digitized speech, I can’t imagine how this is true, was so expensive at the time of the development in 1980. Because of the difficulty of compressing speech in computers, it’s estimated that each word, each word you hear spoken, cost about $1,000 to get into the game. |
George | Mm. |
Mo | Wow. |
Jon | $1,000 for a word, you know, chicken, there’s a grand robot. |
Mo | Jeez. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | There’s two grand, you know, Holy crap. |
George | That’s maybe why he wasn’t sort of robust, right? |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | That’s why he didn’t say so much. |
Mo | And well, actually they told me he had a budget of X number of words. |
George | Because. |
Jon | Did he? |
George | Yeah, oh, yeah. |
Jon | Yeah. |
Mo | Yeah. And so like when he had to, like later on, like we get to one of the sentences, he says, like he had to take a word out of another one to add a word to this one because he only had so much to work with. |
Jon | That’s right. Yep. |
Jon | So if you work in emulation, you can get um not just the phrases, but the individual words, you know like coin, destroy, alert, all of those, but they use those, what I think is about 20 words and phonemes to make a number of memorable things. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | We talked about coin detected in pocket, |
Mo | Yeah, that’s great one. |
Jon | When they they would kill you got the humanoid got the intruder Intruder alert intruder alert when you come in destroy the intruder ah Humanoid must not escape and also my favorite one when you run out of a room chicken fight like a robot Just run out the rooms so he wanted to |
Mo | Yeah. |
George | Right. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Mo | and Apparently he put that one specifically because one of his guys that worked with him and played the game would just run out of rooms and not kill the robots. So he said, he so he so he took words from other ones so he could do that one. |
Mo | And some people were actually thought like it detected coins in your pocket. You know, they’re like, how does it know I have a quarter? |
George | Oh, yeah. I could see believe in that when I was a kid, I was nine years old in 1980. |
Jon | How does it know? |
Mo | Oh yeah. |
George | I would’ve been like, holy shit, that game knows I got quarters. |
Jon | ah and Look, if it can talk, what can’t it do? Right. |
Mo | Right. |
George | Right? |
Jon | You want to get this one cause I have the next one. |
Mo | You me or George? |
George | Who? |
Jon | Well, either of you Mo or George, I don’t care. Yeah. |
Mo | George, we got this one. |
George | Uh, sure. |
Jon | Yeah. |
George | You know, the design of the the main bad guy, evil auto, it’s based on the smiley face, obviously, that was, you know, coming around from the 1960s. |
Jon | Mm. Mm-hmm. |
Mo | Oh, yeah. |
George | Alan McNeil, he hated that image so much because he thought it was fake friendliness, bullshit and everything. So he said, you know what? This is just like the shitty businessmen or salesmen that come around and charge me a thousand dollars for a goddamn word to put in his game. |
George | So I’m going to make my bad guy the smiley just to, you know, like Give a finger to the bumper sticker industry of America. |
Jon | Oh, that’s nice. |
Mo | That’s great. And apparently auto was like a real person. Like there was a, like one of the managers or something who was like a super strict like person. And that’s where they kind of get the name auto for previous job. |
Jon | I read that somewhere. It wasn’t at Stern. It was his previous job. I think it was a manager. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | Yeah. |
George | ah |
Jon | Yeah. His guy. |
Mo | So, so another up you, you know, up yours or somebody else. |
George | he |
Jon | Right. Yeah. Stick it to the man. Stick it to yet another, a specific man sticking to that man and all the, the fake smarmy businessman. |
George | I mean, wasn’t Mario designed after somebody’s manager or something too? |
Jon | Yeah. |
George | So it’s not unheard of that people do this. |
Jon | Like a, ah yeah, yeah. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | Was Mario like a like building manager or something? Yeah, I remember, we talked about that. |
George | Something like that. Yeah. |
Jon | Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Now, if anybody talks about Berserk, we can’t not talk about this here, because people will go, why didn’t you talk about the guy who died? |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | So, It’s not quite an urban myth. It’s somewhat true, but like so many urban myths, it’s not all the facts are known, but there are histories. |
Mo | yeah |
Jon | There are documented facts. Two people suffered a heart attack and died moments after playing berserk. |
George | Mm. |
Jon | Now, ah one of them was Jeff Daley in 1981. He set a high score and then moments later dropped dead at the age of 19. |
George | Oh. |
Jon | Now that one, right? Terrible, terrible. Now I recall The game didn’t kill him. |
Mo | No autopsy. |
Jon | he Later, you know after the after of the fact, autopsy and whatever, he had a heart defect that was undiagnosed, they didn’t know about. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | It could be the excitement of getting a high score or the game could have led to it, but what I’d read that is that anything could have triggered this. It was just happened to be he was playing a game when it happened. And then a year later, I wasn’t aware there were two, in October of 82, 18-year-old Peter Burkowski entered Friartuck’s game room in Calumet City, Illinois, |
Jon | Set two high scores, and a few seconds later, he dropped dead. |
George | Hmm. |
Jon | Now, both players were very healthy and had no history of heart problems or anything else, ah but I know the first one was later diagnosed. I couldn’t find, I dug up, I couldn’t find information on the second one, but yeah, they used that as, Stern didn’t advertise people died playing our games, but also, you could be sure Stern wasn’t saying don’t talk about it because publicity is publicity. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Mo | No. |
Jon | It’s sensational information, so it’s like, okay, why not? |
George | Right. |
Mo | Yeah. So I found something that the only thing I found on the second one was that it was in the yeah weekly world news. |
Jon | Mm hmm. |
Mo | So I don’t know how reputable because that’s next to, you know, monkey boy found in space. |
Jon | Mm hmm. Right. |
Mo | I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, the same level of articles, but I’ll tell you one thing though. |
Jon | Yeah. Yep. |
Mo | I mean, I heard that when I was a kid and that gave the game more. |
Jon | Mm hmm. Right. I want to play it. What killed this guy? |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | Right. |
Mo | No, what’s, what’s up with this game? |
Jon | I know. Yeah. |
Mo | You know, |
Jon | and One more item to share with you that I am sharing with you because I have pretty high confidence that neither of you know this song. You’re aware of Pac-Man fever. |
Mo | Yes. |
Jon | You know, it’s a great song by Buckner Garcia. |
George | Sure. |
Jon | I don’t know if either of you listen to the album regularly, but there are other video games covered, including Berserk. |
Mo | No. |
Mo | Oh. |
George | hu |
Jon | It has its own song. Now, Normally when we do a musical backtrack, we listen to the music in the breaks and then we react to it here. But I’m gonna do something different here. I want you to imagine what you think a berserk song would sound like. |
Jon | And I’m gonna play it for you right now to see what you think. You ready? |
Mo | Okay. Yeah. |
Jon | Here it goes. |
Mo | What the hell? |
George | yeah |
Jon | ah Bubblegum music. |
George | I was gonna say, it feels like Elton John decided to write this song. |
Jon | I just want to get to the chorus. |
Mo | While stoned. |
Jon | Here we go. |
Mo | Oh, of course. |
Mo | Oh, my God. |
Jon | Almost there. |
Mo | OK. |
Mo | Oh, my God. |
George | Hmm. |
Mo | Oh, my God. |
George | Yeah, there’s a minute and a half. I won’t get back. |
Jon | so So what do you think of going berserk? |
Mo | Yeah, ever. |
Jon | Does it fit thematically with what you expected? |
George | I don’t think that fits with anything ever. |
Mo | Yeah. that Yeah. I’m with Georgia on this one. i Yeah. Yeah. |
Jon | Well, because I had the album, I had the LP as a kid. This was a heavy rotation in my bedroom. I heard go and berserk a lot. I know the words, but I, you |
George | That’s what she said. |
Jon | got me. I’m speechless. |
Jon | Berserk was released in the arcades in 1980, and it was in every arcade that I ever went to from 80 through 85, 89, 92, whatever, as long as there were arcades, Berserk was in rotation. |
Mo | Oh, yeah, big time. |
Jon | But it wasn’t the end of the Berserk story. As I mentioned, McNeil also, a couple years later, I think it was 82 or 83, wrote a sequel called Frenzy. |
Mo | Hmm. |
Jon | And you could accidentally think it’s the same game if you glanced at it. It’s similar. Walls, robots, you’re shooting, evil auto, all that stuff is there. But he added a number of really interesting things that I don’t know how familiar you guys are with frenzy or its differences, but um first there are destructible walls. |
Mo | Not much. |
Jon | So you should be in Berserk, every wall you ran into is electrified to kill you. |
Mo | Interesting. |
Mo | Yes. |
Jon | Not the case in frenzy. Mini walls are not electrified. You can shoot out little holes in the wall and create your own path through the maze. So that’s the thing. oh For walls that you can’t destroy, bullets ricochet off of them. |
Jon | So you can, you can like, ah you know, do a yeah like a pool table, you know, three bank it to get to a robot if you need to, or their bullets will ricochet to get to you. |
George | Hmm. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | You got to watch out for that. Evil auto is actually killable |
Mo | Oh, kind of. |
George | Ah. |
Jon | Kind of, yeah. If you shoot a whole bunch four or five times, he’ll disappear, but in three or four seconds, he’ll come right back and faster. So really, it’s it’s just a reprise to give you time to get out. |
Mo | ah |
Jon | The coolest thing though is the room effect. So every three or four rooms, there’s something in the room, like an electrical machine or a picture of evil auto, and shooting through the wall and shooting that changes the game. |
Jon | Like one of them is like a power plant, and if you shoot it, it’ll disable the robots for a few seconds. |
Mo | Oh. |
George | No. |
Jon | or another one is like a logic computer, you shoot it and the robots will behave erratically for a few seconds. So you can actually impact how the game behaves based on these special rooms. And so I used to always just think, oh, it was just you know a refreshed berserk, but they added a lot to it. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | So if you like the original and you haven’t looked at frenzy, there’s a lot there. |
Mo | Interesting. Interesting. |
Jon | I’ll pick this last bit up. And when they released it, as we were talking about, you need two or three minutes and then make some more money as you know arcade owners. I know, George, you worked in arcades, you know, if it’s not making money, you got to do something to make that machine make money ah up the difficulty or fewer lives or whatever, or mod kits. |
George | Mm hmm. |
Jon | Now you could buy frenzy brand new, or they released a mod kit. |
George | Sure. |
Jon | If you had berserk, you changed it out one ship, the marquee, and I think the CPU, and you you converted a berserk to a frenzy, and it’s a brand new game just like that. |
Mo | Nice. |
George | Yeah, this is a very popular way of getting new games into an arcade, especially when I worked in them. If you had ah like we talked about earlier, John, you were talking about several of them ringing a column or on a back wall or something like that. |
George | taking one or two of them and swapping out a chip and a marquee and maybe a play field or something like that was a hell of a lot cheaper, not only for you, the arcade owner, but also for the company to ship out to you because it’s a a lot cheaper to ship a couple of chips or a board than it is an entire fucking cabinet. |
Mo | Oh yeah, that’s makes sense, right? |
Jon | Oh, yeah. |
Mo | Right. |
Jon | Right. Right. It’s a FedEx package instead of a pallet. |
George | ah |
Mo | Right, yeah. |
Jon | It’s a whole bill different ballgame. |
George | Yeah. And the nice thing was in the arcade, you could then get a lot of like new fresh excitement in your arcade where people would gravitate not only toward the frenzy game that you just installed a couple on the berserk machines, but then would play berserk right next to it while they were waiting for their turn on frenzy. |
George | So it would increase the profitability on both games. |
Jon | Ah. |
George | And you one thing that arcades pretty early on we’re trying to find ways to do we’re trying to minimize the overhead the costs of running the arcade and the largest cost of running the arcade was not the payroll believe it or not it wasn’t terribly the electricity it was the initial price of these cabinets they were not cheap even by 1980 dollar |
Mo | Right. |
Jon | Those big machines. Hmm. |
George | And to be able to take an existing machine and reskin it, put something else in it and put it on. That’s what a lot of help. They did it with games they weren’t supposed to. |
George | So in this case, it made even more sense. |
Jon | All right, yep, of course. |
Mo | Actually, I just want to bring up that before George gets in his question, should we talk about the ports first? |
Jon | but What’s your question? What’s your question about? |
Mo | and no so Because he’s going to ask if it’s bigger in an arcade or at home. |
George | It’s. i Yeah, it’s right there. |
Mo | That’s George’s question. |
Jon | Oh, is that the deal? |
Mo | But then I’ll say, we probably should talk about the ports first, and then we could talk about. |
Jon | Oh yeah, maybe we should. we talk Let’s talk the ports exist. Yeah, so the ports up here. |
George | Sure. |
Jon | So why don’t you grab the ports and that’s a perfect place for you to jump in. |
George | Here, we’ll do this way. |
Jon | Well, actually we should bring this up too, yeah. |
George | And then that way, Mo can do the backstory thing. |
Jon | Okay, cool. |
Mo | OK. |
Mo | but But yeah, I mean, this game was so popular, though. I mean, they ported it to like everything back then, like for home play, which is one of the few games that actually did a pretty good job of porting. |
Jon | Mm hmm. |
George | Well, hell, it only took up 8K. |
Jon | Yes. |
Mo | Yeah, you’re right. |
George | I mean, |
Mo | I mean, the 2600 version, I remember playing that one. |
Jon | Oh. |
Mo | I felt like it was it was probably one of the closest to arcade games that I think I played on 2600. |
Jon | Mm hmm. |
George | Mm hmm. |
Mo | They did a 5200. |
Jon | It didn’t have the speech, which is one problem, but it it couldn’t do that because berserk is like 4K on twenty six hundred, but the gameplay was ridiculously good. |
Mo | No, didn’t have this. Yeah, that was a problem. |
Mo | Yeah, it’s even less. |
Jon | Yeah. |
Mo | Yeah. Uh, the target 5200, which that one was, eh, because the controller itself sucked. |
Jon | Yep. |
Mo | So that’s kind of made the, you know, nothing to do with the game itself. |
Jon | Who knows how good the game was, yeah. |
Mo | And then the Vectrex that we talked about. Um, and the the thing I have a little tidbit information I found out was that the 2600 gave us the first backstory for the game because I didn’t yeah know it. |
George | Oh, yeah. |
Jon | Like in the manual or? |
Mo | No. Well, in the book it had like why this person was doing this. Like who are you? |
George | Ah. |
Jon | Okay, all right, yeah. |
Mo | Why were you going through the maze? Which apparently it’s astrodate. I don’t know what astrodate means, but that’s what it says. 3200 and you’re the last survivor of a group that came to explore the planet called Mazion. |
Jon | Start date. |
Mo | Again, who knows? |
Jon | Maisie on, a little on the nose. |
George | Of course. |
Mo | um Is controlled by. |
George | It was it was all made out of corn, apparently. |
Mo | they it It was controlled by evil robots who killed everybody except for you and you’re trying to escape the prison that they put you in. |
George | Ah. |
Jon | Corn prison. Got it. Yeah. |
George | Corn prison. |
Mo | Yeah, or maze prison, maybe. |
Jon | Sure. |
George | You know, Mo, you bring up these ports and it brings up a question that I’ve kind of had in my mind since you guys talked about wanting to do this podcast. Do you think Berserk was bigger, more popular in the arcades or at home? |
Mo | Hmm. |
George | Because this is the time when the arcade starts to come home, 1980, 82, 84, whatever it came out for the different systems. |
Mo | Right. |
George | I remember having a 2600, Berserk was one of the first cartridges I got, um you know, early on. |
Mo | Yeah. |
George | I still have several copies of Berserk in my, you know, current 2600 library of cartridges here today, even. |
Jon | Mm hmm. |
George | It’s a very prolific cartridge. It’s not one of those that’s super rare that costs a lot of money on the retro market at all. |
Jon | It’s not rare, no. |
Mo | Oh, no, no. |
George | ah Probably a buck or two at the most because it was so prolific. Do you guys think it was bigger at home than it was in the arcade, even though it didn’t have the speech synthesis like John pointed out? |
Jon | That’s a tough call. That’s hard to say. |
Mo | Yeah, because it was. |
Jon | I mean, it’s. |
Mo | and so It was super popular at home. |
Jon | Yeah. |
Mo | I mean, I played everybody played that game at home. |
Jon | It was yet. but I don’t wanna take anything away from its arcade popularity. i mean It’s like it’s a cop-out to go, they were equally popular. I don’t think that’s true, but it’s almost like they were two beasts. |
Mo | Yeah, yeah. |
George | Sure. |
Jon | Like the Berserk that I played in the arcade was more punishing and it cost me quarters. And I played it differently and more seriously than when I played Berserk at home and I owned the cartridge and I could put the difficulty way low with one of the game options. |
Mo | It had stakes behind it, yeah. |
Jon | you know Robots don’t shoot at me and I can run around and explore. And it was almost when I played it at home, I was imagining I was in the arcade because it looked so good, even though without the speech. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | So they fed each other, which I know is a cop out to answer your question, which one? Well, some of each, but for me, it really, I like them both for different reasons, I guess. |
Mo | Hmm. |
Jon | What about you, Mo? |
Mo | I was I think the arcade. |
Jon | Yeah, tough in it. |
Mo | Yeah, I think the arcade game itself was was super popular. I mean, it was one of the one of the most popular games for a short time there until, you know, some other games came in play. But um but again, like I can’t remember going to anybody’s house. |
Mo | We didn’t have this game. |
George | Yeah. |
Mo | you know, like everybody had berserk. I mean, it was just like a staple, like because it was such a good port that, and I guess it was like, we played it a lot also because it was the game that we felt like we were in the arcade, right? We were playing berserk at home, but we kind of felt like we were arcade experience. So I don’t know. I would probably say at home would be my guess. Cause I probably paid a lot more because there was no quarters. |
Jon | Yeah. |
George | Well, I mean, if you look at it on a unit sold, there’s no question at home sold more units than arcade. |
Mo | Oh, dude. |
Jon | Yeah. |
Mo | Okay. |
George | Of course, arcade units cost a shit ton more. |
Mo | Yes. |
Jon | Right. |
George | They did do 50,000 of them, which is no small number, which you talked about earlier. I’m sure they did several million because of how many times I go to Goodwill and see a fucking berserk cartridge for the 2600 over in the dollar bin or something like that. |
George | Popularity doesn’t necessarily mean sales or money or quantity, though. but I think to Mo’s point, the at home might have been slightly more popular because it was more accessible for more people. |
Mo | Yeah. |
George | Not everybody had an arcade in their town. |
Mo | Yeah, good point. |
George | John, you lived out in the fucking woods. |
Jon | you’re true |
George | You had an arcade you had to drive to. If you didn’t have that arcade around, but somebody mentioned to you and you saw berserk one time somewhere, you’d have probably petitioned your parents for the cartridge and played that more than you did in the arcade. |
Mo | Yeah, yeah, absolutely. |
Jon | I tell you what else you just made me think of is I think my answer changes over time, right? So ah starting cheating 1980, there’s only the arcade version. |
George | Sure. |
Jon | It’s the most popular, right? |
George | Right. |
Mo | Yes, obviously. |
Jon | ah But as soon as there are two of them, arcade is the most popular, we have a port. But the interesting thing that I’m just realizing is that in the arcade, as newer games and more sophisticated As newer games and more sophisticated games came out, Berserk started showing its age in the arcade, looking a little simpler, looking a little older. |
George | Yeah. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | But in the Atari 2600, Berserk was bleeding edge for what you could get on your home console. |
Mo | ah Right. |
Jon | So I think later the later in the life of the game you go, the more popular or ah Enthusiastic players would be about the home version because it’s not that’s not a big deal in the arcade anymore, but it’s Awesome on your home console now, you know It’s so accurate. |
Mo | Yeah. |
George | Other than speech synthesis, I can’t think of a single game ported from the arcade to the 2600 that was more like its arcade counterpart. |
Mo | Oh, absolutely. Without a doubt. Yeah. |
Jon | Yeah, the scale is off but oh, yeah Mm-hmm |
George | It’s almost like the arcade game was designed as a home game, but then they threw an extra chip in it to make it into an arcade game. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | Yeah, yeah, no, I can see that. Yeah, it’s it’s so faithful. i’ve so I’ve said before in videos, man, this might be the most graphically accurate game that has ever been ported to the 2600, and it deserves its fame. |
Mo | I mean, it was simple. |
Jon | Yeah, and simple. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | Yeah. I think it’s why it’s so popular. It’s so easily approachable. It’s like ah like a Tetris. What do you do? Run, shoot? |
George | Yeah. |
Jon | What else? No, that’s all. That’s all. |
Mo | No hit walls. |
Jon | It’s it’s simple. |
Jon | Well, as is so often the case with so many early arcade games, marketing became a big thing. Now, not as big as a Pac-Man or a Donkey Kong, but ah Berserk was popular enough. Look, it sold 50,000 units and started going going to homes like we were just saying. ah You could get some marketing. There were some um toys that you can get and stuff. And one that I got, eh, |
Jon | 10 years ago or so, Milton Bradley did a berserk board game. now I’m a sucker for board games based on these arcade games because it’s nothing like the arcade game. |
Mo | yeah |
George | Ah. |
Jon | It’s just the imagery, you know, the best part of this little board game is you have the little robots that do stand up in the maze and your a little guy that shoots. |
George | Right. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | He has like his arm on a little swivel, like he has to raise up his guns to shoot. |
George | Ah. |
Jon | So they did more and more to try to make it more like the guy in the game who had to lift his arm and shoot. It’s it’s it’s a regular maze game like any other board game, but it’s fun yeah it’s for what it is. |
Mo | If you want to see something funny, ah go to YouTube and search for the TV commercial for the board game because it’s out there. |
Jon | Oh, really? |
George | Oh. |
Mo | And it’s like a young kid asking his grandma if she wants to play berserk. And she’s like, yeah. And she’s running to her car. And he’s like, no, no, Grandma, we can play at home. i mean It was it was it was so funny. |
George | Oh. |
Jon | Well, continuing the legacy, so that was back in the 80s. I think that board game came out like an 82, 83. |
Mo | Hmm. |
Jon | Stern, you mentioned this earlier, in recent decades has focused on their pinball game. |
George | Sure. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | And I say they’re not their pinball game one machine, but their their expertise in pinball has been ramping up. |
George | Yeah. |
Jon | And their arcade library was just sitting on a back catalog on somebody’s back shelf and nobody was had could do anything with it until 2003 Atari, who was has been on the rise for the last five years ramp and think, well, what but what what but I miss. |
Mo | yeah |
George | You said 2003. |
Jon | Oh, I did. Thank you. |
Jon | until Atari in 2003, they had been already, I did it again. |
Mo | We said 2003 again. |
George | Hello. |
Jon | I said it again. I said it again. Okay. I’m going to say it wrong one more time. And then no, I got it. Okay. right but Until Atari in 2023. |
Jon | who had been on a rampage of buying up other franchises and other stuff, news dropped in March that they acquired 12 stern arcade games, including berserk and frenzy. |
George | Mm. |
Jon | And there’s a few more ah Tasmania lost tune. We did some videos about it back then. And as soon as they bought it, they started capitalizing on berserk. |
Mo | Yeah, yeah. |
Jon | Actually, the day after they announced it, the art the Atari 2600 version that you could not get anywhere was in the Atari VCS store to buy the next day for $5. |
George | Right. |
Jon | So right away they had that up there. And then later in the year in 2023, so they came out with, they had this recharge line we’ve talked about on the podcast many times, they did a Berserk Recharged. |
Jon | Now, have you guys played or have any thoughts about that one? I do, I have thoughts about it. |
George | I haven’t played it. |
Mo | Yeah, I did. |
Jon | Okay. |
Mo | yeah |
Jon | Yeah, it kind of made it a dual stick shooter, which is interesting because you can run in one direction and shoot the other, that’s cool. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | But it it kind of lost some of the berserkness. It just kind of made it a little more generic, but I mean, yeah, there’s more that can be done. |
Mo | Yeah. It didn’t grab me. |
Jon | Another current iteration that was available now, finally, now that someone owned the rights, Atari now is out there. Stern had it and wasn’t talking about it. Atari owned it. So Replicade that makes the one sixth scale arcade cabinets, |
Mo | Yeah. Oh, yeah. |
Jon | They came out with a Berserk, Berserk cabinet and a frenzy cabinet, and both of them had both games. I don’t know if you guys remember, there was a brouhaha around ah the release of those. |
Mo | A kerfuffle. |
Jon | Yeah. So replicate in the name, it’s replicating these old arcade machines. |
Mo | Right. |
Jon | And now that Atari owned Berserk on the marquee, on the artwork, the stern name was turned into Atari, but in a stern font. |
Mo | o Oh, so it’s not not quite authentic, then. |
George | Yep. Yeah. |
Jon | And there was this, I’m going to ask you guys where you land on this. |
Mo | ah Yes. |
Jon | The thing is they own it so they have the right to rebrand it if they want. But you want it accurate to what you remember in the arcade. Now, Replicate ended up saying we throw our hands up. |
Jon | They gave you a sticker to change it to whichever one you wanted. but If you’re a Replicade, where do you fall? What’s the right choice now on a Berserk cabinet that’s owned by Atari, but was never had an Atari on it back in the day? Let’s start with you, George. what do you Where do you come down? |
George | I mean, so you’re talking about ownership rights versus I guess accuracy for nostalgia, right? |
Jon | Yeah, yeah. |
George | Obviously being in the nostalgia market as we are. |
Mo | Yeah. |
George | I really want to see the stern font when I first saw it. |
Mo | yeah |
George | And like I said, at the beginning of the podcast, I didn’t play this game crap ton, but I, even as a neophyte berserk fan noticed immediately that says fucking Atari. |
George | That’s bullshit. |
Jon | Right. |
George | That should say stern. |
Jon | Mm hmm. |
George | And I remember voicing my opinion pretty strongly on a couple of forums and saying, look, I understand your own the rights, but, and we’re good friends with Atari. We, we work with them all the time. |
Mo | Mm hmm. Oh, yeah. |
George | They’re great people. |
Mo | Yeah, they’re great. |
George | This was a misstep in my opinion. You should have left it as stern. You could have thrown the, as created by Atari on the back or as licensed by Atari on the back with a sticker. |
Jon | Sure. |
Mo | Right. |
George | And that way you still get your comeuppance. |
Jon | Mm hmm. |
George | You’re going to get your money anyway from the licensing sale. |
Jon | Yeah. |
Mo | Yeah. |
George | So do you really need to have your name on it just to make yourself feel good that you, i mean because replicates the ones doing it. You’re just licensing it to them. |
Jon | Yeah, yeah. |
Mo | Right. |
George | I think they should have left it as stern. |
Jon | What did you think, Mo? |
Mo | Absolutely. I agree with George. They should have left the Distern. |
Jon | Yeah. |
Mo | You know, for the little cachet they get for putting Atari on the front, I think they they lost some sales because some people be like, oh, it’s not authentic. I’m not going to buy it. |
George | Yeah. |
Jon | I and think you nailed it. That’s the thing. Leaving it stern had zero blowback potential. |
Mo | Right. |
Jon | Zero. I mean, it doesn’t make Atari happy because they own it and they wish it didn’t have these other guys’ names on it, but zero blowback potential. |
Mo | Mm hmm. |
Jon | Putting, replacing it, and I’m not talking on the artwork in the ROM. It says Atari in a big stern blocky font. it’s There are plenty of people who buy this and go, they don’t know the difference. |
Jon | The problem is the people that buy a replicate for $250, they probably do know the difference and those are the people you’re marketing. |
Mo | Oh, absolutely. |
Jon | So yeah, I wish it had said stern. |
George | Yeah. |
Jon | So yeah, what are you gonna do? |
Mo | Yeah. Yeah, what are you going to do? But but, you know, I mean, the the legacy of the game still kind of went on. I mean, John, one of our favorite games, you know, Robotron 2084. |
Jon | Oh yeah. |
Jon | Yeah, your favorite game to beat me at, you mean? |
Mo | Yeah, we. That’s right. Great game, though. That’s one that actually the creator of that Eugene Jarvis said he was inspired by rope by by. Yeah. |
Mo | Sorry, you can’t talk right now by Berserk. Like we said, we started from the beginning. |
Jon | Yeah. Yeah. Do that phrase again. |
Mo | Sorry. |
Jon | I’ll never find the front of the end of that. |
Mo | All right. So so John, like one of our favorite games, Robotron 2084, you know, we both know. |
Jon | Well, yeah. Your favorite game to beat me at, not our favorite game. |
Mo | Oh, well, yeah, that too. But um the guy who created using Jarvis, he said his inspiration, you know, was berserk. |
Jon | Yes. |
Mo | You know, he said he played berserk and he said, oh, he so you kind of see it right robot shooting, except now you’re saving people. |
George | Well. |
Jon | Run around shooting robots, right? But they added. Yeah. More kinds of enemies and you’re saving people. Yeah. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | I could see that. |
George | I didn’t know if you’re going to do the smash TV thing or not. |
Mo | Oh, I was gonna say, I have no idea what that even is, be quite honest. |
George | OK. |
Jon | Oh, I can’t, I can’t, I’ll hop into it, I’ll do that, yep yeah. |
Mo | Okay. Yeah. |
Jon | Yeah, it also very similar to ah Smash TV, another one that’s, which was the last episode we were reading a fourth listener email about Running Man. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | And yeah, and Smash TV is kind of based on Running Man. |
George | All right. Yeah. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | It’s a game show where they’re killing people and you’re in the middle of this. |
George | Right. |
Mo | Oh. |
Jon | Another, I think it was a dual stick shooter even, or maybe it was a shoot, I don’t know, moving shoot. But again, in a maze, in an arena, shooting robots, trying to get to the exit. very similar, it inspired lots of games, I’m sure, being one of the early, one of the early games of its type. |
George | Well, we’re not going to go through a podcast talking about an arcade game without at least hitting on some high score statistics because that’s what video games are you know all about is getting the high score. |
Mo | Oh, absolutely. |
Jon | Oh, no. |
Mo | Yeah, we have to. |
Jon | Yeah. |
Mo | Yeah, that’s a must. |
Jon | That’s why you play. |
George | It’s not about learning how to play the game better. I don’t give a shit about that. I just want the high score. I want to see GXG right up there next to the big number on the top of that line. |
Mo | yeah |
Jon | That’s right. Amen. |
George | ah According to Twin Galaxies, there’s two high scores available for Berserk. Currently right now, Phil Younger has 401,130 for the original dip switch settings, which plays the game at regular speeds and difficulties. |
Mo | Jeez. Jeez. |
Jon | OK. |
George | ah There is another high score that they recognize for fast bullets. So a little bit like the fast shooting Galaga, but this is in Berserk. |
Jon | OK. |
Mo | Mm-hmm |
George | ah There’s a gentleman named Ponosaurus. |
Mo | Love the name No |
George | Who, uh, he got 350,340 for that high score now. |
Jon | That’s not much lower. |
George | Well, it’s lower, which surprised me. Cause I was thinking it should be higher because I, most people can do a lot better with fast bullets in Gallagher that came, but I’m guessing it’s fast bullets of the robots. |
Jon | I think. |
Jon | I. |
Jon | The robots, that’s what i that’s what I assumed too. |
George | Yeah. |
Jon | Yeah, that’s what I figured. Because otherwise you’d have a huge advantage and it’d be double, you’d think. Yeah. |
George | That’s what I was wondering when I saw the scores. I’m like, Hmm. |
Jon | yeah you know When I was browsing high scores, I came across an older record, not either of these, but someone else who had done the ah ah regular bullets version, his score was in the 300,000s or whatever. |
Jon | And it said it took him four and a half hours to accomplish that. |
Mo | Jeez. |
George | Well. |
Jon | A marathon. And I looked at the date and it said, oh, it happened on the 27th through the 28th. Like he was playing overnight. He was in the arcade cranking on that thing. |
George | ah |
Mo | I just, it just boggles the mind. Think how many screens that was. Cause you didn’t get a lot of points in berserk. I don’t remember it being like a height. |
Jon | Usually, no, it was slow points. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | Now the further you went as the robots got faster, killing them was worth more. And you got a bonus for emptying the room. But usually, evil auto was coming before I made it halfway through the room. |
Mo | Right. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | And so I had to haul ass or I would get squished. |
George | Right. |
Jon | I can’t, yeah, how you manage 400,000 in that game over several hours. |
George | Mm. |
Jon | it’s That kind of people were cut from a different cloth. They were able to have that kind of focus and that kind of the kind of skill all rolled into one. |
Mo | Yeah. |
Jon | Yeah, it ain’t me, it ain’t me. |
Mo | No, not me either. |
Jon | I get my high score and then they turn off the machine. |
Mo | Did it. |
Jon | Bye, it’s gone. It is. All right, guys, I have had a great time talking with you about Berserk. Before we get out of this show, I want to take just a second to thank two more brand new Patreon supporters. |
Mo | Oh, wow. |
Jon | We we try to take time every every show. And I want to thank Chris and Brad S, who are both brand new. |
Mo | Awesome. |
Jon | They both headed over to patreon dot.com slash GenXGrownup. Clicked on a few things, filled it out. set up a regular recurring monthly contribution to help keep us going. ah For as little as a dollar a month, you can do the same. Fourth listener, we would love to have your support and add you to our roster of amazing supporters. ah Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Brad S. And thank you all of our very generous ah patrons who support us with a monthly pledge. You mean the world to us. We can’t thank you enough, but we’re gonna next time we talk, so. |
Jon | That’s going to wrap it up for this backtrack edition of the show. Don’t worry. We got more. Don’t worry. We got more coming to your way in just a couple of weeks, taking a couple of weeks off. It will have rewinds coming your way until then. |
Jon | I am John George. Thank you so much for being here. |
George | Yes, sir. |
Jon | Mo, you know, I appreciate you. |
Mo | Always fun, then. |
Jon | Fourth listener, it’s you. We all appreciate most of all, though. and We cannot wait to talk to you again next time. Bye bye. |
George | See you guys. |
Mo | Take care, everybody. |