THE HISTORY OF VIDEOGAMES PART 11b - November 1999
| It’s surprising that Berzerk hasn’t been the
subject of a modern update (see the feature elsewhere), because if ever a game was just
asking to be tarted up for the new millennium, this is the one. (In fact, it’s
already made a guest appearance in the future, with the police robots of Bender’s
robot planet in Matt Groening’s Futurama speaking with the voices of the Berzerk bad
guys.) A simple maze blaster, the big selling point of Berzerk was that very speech –
it was the first game to feature talking enemies, the speech synthesis technology of the
time being so new that it cost $1000 to program each individual word into the game’s
ROM. Berzerk was also the first game to attempt a bit of on-screen comedy – your robot opponents often fell foul of slapstick misfortune, shooting each other in the head or walking into walls and exploding in their attempts to kill you. And if you legged it out of a room without killing them all, the survivors would taunt you in their Speak & Spell voices: "Chicken – fight like a robot!". Okay, it’s not hilarious, but even Bob Monkhouse had to start somewhere. The fact is, Berzerk is already the grand-daddy of the likes of Quake and Duke Nukem. It wouldn’t take a lot to bring back the dough-brained electro-goons in fancy new 3D robo-suits and give us a game with a bit of character again. It’s about time. |
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