Frenzy Score

Playing some Colecovision Frenzy. 22702. Setting #1.

Colecovision Warrior of Wiz

Similar to Frenzy and Wizard of Wor. Classic arcade goodness. Kill the wizard and his robots before they kill you.

Frenzy Poster

This particular poster is for the Colecovision version of Frenzy, but this artwork originally came out with the arcade version in 1982. That 2 years before George Cameron would make skeleton robots famous with The Terminator in 1984. This particular drawing is obviously inspired by Star Wars, as the R2-D2 unit can testify.

So Star Wars inspired Frenzy which likely inspired The Terminator.

Berzerk Atari 2600 Review

Berzerk and Frenzy are two of the best video games ever made, but unfortunately Stern went bunk and these classic have not appeared in subsequent anthologies because of licensing issues. Stern launched an agressive marketing campaign to demonstrate how arcade gameplay could exist in the home on the 2600.

This sort of marked the beginning of the end, as home consoles began to make more financial sense to most gamers and children. Nowdays, arcade are relics and littered with ticket games--if they even exist at all.

The only upside is that you can own Berzerk in your home for Atari. The only problem is that this version fails to capture the perfection and depth of the original. It still constitutes a great game in its own right, and it features more options and gameplays than the arcade DIP switches. My personal favorite option is turning evil Otto off, which makes the game much easier and allows for truly epic marathon games.

The original Berzerk featured 64,000 possible mazes, the main drawback of the Atari version is that only a handful of maps exists. Still, you get to lead a lone hero through a nightmarish electric mall avoiding robots and fighting for great justice.

You can score this cart for peanuts, so it's a must for any Atari collection. I just wish this game made it on to some of the anthologies. Considering it hasn't, it might just be the best reason to own an actual 2600.

I'll never get tired of zapping killbots.

Berzerk

Second only to Frenzy. Alan McNeil (working for Stern) created Berzerk in 1979, and the cabinet launched nationwide in 1980. Arcade-goers everywhere glared, amazed that the machine demanded the quarters in their pocket. Although a gimmick, the synthesized robotic voices became assimilated into popular culture. "Destroy the humanoid" and "Intruder alert" both enter Hollywood's vocabulary in the '80s and '90s. Many humanoids certainly are not aware that these phrases first originated in Berzerk.

In January 1981 a player died of a heart attack after getting the high score of 16,660 at his local arcade. October 1982: another player dies of a heart attack while playing Berzerk.

Why all the death? Because Berzerk (as I've said before) symbolizes a common human nightmare very well. You run around a hopelessly complicated maze, chased by vague destroyers for irrational reasons. One can play Berzerk, but, eventually, one dies. The player can earn 2 extra lives, but no game will last forever (unless the player exploits a bug). I like Berzerk because it reminds me of death. Like Missile Command, it's a cautionary tale against creating death weapons. The robots in Berzerk talk and think; awful sentience can be seen in Evil Otto's grin. Every game of Berzerk begins with literally impossible odds, yet the human fights and sometimes kills lots of robots before touching the electric walls.

All of this passed into gaming legend and was extensively covered in Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade. Two years later, Stern would release Frenzy, and then port Berzerk to as many systems as possible.

Although Berzerk is well known among arcade gamers, it remains relatively overlooked in the mainstream outside of its few cultural remnants ("Goin' Berzerk" and a Futurama cameo come to mind). The series was never successfully updated. Stern stopped making games.

Frenzy

Frenzy is Berzerk 2. Typically, most older gamers seem to appreciate Berzerk (1980) much more than Frenzy(1982); Berzerk receives considerably more internet chatter. From a historical perspective this makes sense because Berzerk sold many more units than its frightfully awesome sequel. Both games were created by Alan McNeil, supposedly based on a dream.

Berzerk represents both life, and, more specifically, the archetypical nightmare. You start, but no matter what you die. The nightmare motif is apparent through the minimalistic graphics, only the basic symbols required to transmit information are used. The "running man" resembles modern signs for "man," and the robots, similarly, use very few pixels to represent the concept. This simple transmission of information allows the player's imagination to run wild. However, death dominates the Great Electric Maze, so death dominates the player's imagination. Suddenly, the horrible smile on Evil Otto's face seems more sinister and the robots prove that despite all of your human intellegence you are outgun, horribly outmatched, with absolutely no hope of victory, only the possibility of a glorious death.

Frenzy expands upon this formula by adding skeletons, ghosts, and more horrors. Every 4 screens you'll encounter a "boss room" which has a special tile. The Giant Evil Otto punishes attacks on his kind, the telsa coils power the robots and when shot all robots will stop moving. The mainframe computer, when destroyed, causes the robots to go insane, or break into a "frenzy." Finally a haunted robot factory that produces ghosts.



The new enemies are a nice variation on the old robot AI. Skeletons are difficult to hit from above or below, and ghosts are harder to hit horizontally (but only when attacking from above the ghost, if you attack horizontally at the feet of the ghost it is still very easy). But best of all are the walls. The old electric walls are gone, replaced by destructible walls and mirror walls. Mirrors reflect bullets (slightly changing the angle in a predictable way) and destructible walls allow the player to blast an impromptu exit from the current board. The board is also subtly different from Berzerk's. Berzerk uses a 3x5 "grid" and Frenzy uses a 4x6. With the increase in "rooms," Frenzy increases the amount of robots per board dramatically (I've seen 24 robots on a screen!) No walls are electric in Frenzy, making pixel-perfect shots easier in certain situations.

Mirrors are your friend, and getting robots to kill each other is the key to success. Here are some other tips:

1. Find a "safe spot" as soon as possible.
2. Try to enter into the bottom-right "room."
3. Set the dipswitches to give you an extra life every 1000 points.

But in all honestly, the game is designed to award an extra life at every 3000 points, so, unlike Berzerk, Frenzy can theoretically be played for 64,000 screens (at which point the game would crash). Therefore, Frenzy is a more uplifting look at robot destruction, with a cheerful Halloween theme and amazing, colorful artwork.

Frenzy is, by far, the better game. Proponents of Berzerk will praise it's minimalistic approach and 1980 charm, and I too applaud Berzerk; however, Frenzy provides a more complex world without exceeding the general concept of Berzerk. Frenzy offers the player more flexibility when designing a creative, elegant solution to a difficult board. Skeletons, ghosts, mirrors, and boss rooms bring the nightmare into sharper focus. The hieroglyphics of Frenzy are more vivid and terrifying than its cuneiform ancestor. These games, along with Robotron:2084, define the robot-shooting genre.