PrinceWatercress plays Berzerk (Atari 2600) - Part 1 of 13

It was only a matter of time before I played this one. This is one I've wanted to cover for a while.

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Here is the story, according to the manual:

The Astro Date is 3200 and you are the last survivor of a small group of earth people who came to explore the planet Mazeon. Soon after landing, you discovered the planet is a dark, apparently uninhabitable place. But by then it was too late to turn back because your space craft had been destroyed by Automazeons.

Now you are a prisoner here. You are trapped in a maze where even the walls are death to touch. Grim robot thugs known as "Automazeons" stalk you relentlessly and you must systematically pulverize them with your laser gun before they eliminate you with theirs.

You are never safe on the planet Mazeon. Even when you've destroyed the mechanical heavies, Evil Otto, the mad and merciless mind behind the robot gangs, leaps out from where he's been observing the battle. You flee in panic because you know that you cannot kill Evil Otto and that, once he catches you, you'll never escape.

He will pound you to a lifeless pulp, grinning like a maniac all the while. Your only hope is to get out of the electrified maze before Evil Otto catches you.

If you do get out, you find yourself in another maze. Again the faceless robots shoot at you, again Evil Otto pursues you, again you must dodge and shoot and run ... into yet another maze. It's enough to drive you bonkers!

The fire button fires a bullet in the last direction you travelled, while the joystick is used to move in eight directions. You can fire in any of the eight directions, including diagonally, in order to take down the robots that slowly hunt you down and fire at you.

Shooting down the robots will obviously give you points, and if you defeat all of the robots in a room before moving on to another one, you'll get some bonus points of top of all that destruction which is bigger the more robots you have to shoot down in a room. You'll get an extra life after getting enough points (which depends on the game variation), and you'll need all the lives you can get for the highest score. You lose a life if you get hit by an enemy laser or by Evil Otto (more on Otto later) or if you run into a wall. Lose all your lives, and the game is over.

There are twelve game variations, and have different rules such as whether or not enemies shoot at you, how many points you need for an extra life (or in some variations, whether you can earn extra lives at all) or if Evil Otto is nonexistent, temporarily stoppable or invincible (again, more on Otto later).

The robots will shoot at you if you are completely lined up with them, and the more rooms you go through, the faster their lasers will be. You'll need to be ready to move as well as have more than enough distance between you and them as you get further into this never-ending game. Interestingly, they don't start shooting at you until you exit your first room, after which the lasers start out slow and get faster and faster as you progress. Unlike the robots, however, you can fire in the four cardinal directions as well as diagonally, allowing you to take some pot shots at the robots when they will least expect them.

As you go through the rooms, the robots will be yellow and go from that color to orange to green to blue and finally purple before going back to purple. Once you loop back to yellow from there, the robots will be at their most dangerous and their lasers will be at their fastest speed. Once you get through the "first loop," you may have to be a little crafty to take out some enemies. Thankfully, the walls are just as bad for the robots as they are for you, and if they run into the walls, they will die. It is possible to get a robot to inadvertently shoot another robot and kill it, giving you the points.

Every once in a while, a bullet will not kill a robot. If that happens, just shoot the robot again and it will go down.

In Game 1, the robots will shoot at you, but Evil Otto is nowhere in sight and you'll get an extra life every 1,000 points, making it the easiest of the "default-style" variations.

Game 1 is not the easiest game variation, but it is not the hardest one, either. You may get bored with it once you hone your skills enough, and you just might find yourself playing the other game variations, which you can access with the Game Select switch (the difficulty switches are not used in this game). Thankfully, the other game variations will be covered in future videos.