Talk:Berzerk (video game)

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)

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!

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.

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)

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)