Berzerk / Frenzy

[dire51]

Okay, here it is. Just as some background, according to the book: during the editing of Evil Dead in New York, nearly every day at lunch Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi would go to a local arcade called Fascination to "break up the grind" and play rounds of Asteroids and Berzerk. As he put it, "Sam, with his innate ability to blow the living crap out of anything and everything, excelled at both."

One day they spotted Brain DePalma playing a game:

"Sam brazenly approached Mr. DePalma and half asked, half challenged him to a round of Berserk. DePalma, not exactly Mr. Amiable, agreed, and I'm pleased to say that Sam kicked his A-picture butt from one end of Broadway to the other."

[zzz]

Awesome.

Maybe the entire piece should have just been that quote followed by "... and that's why you should play Berzerk."

[dire51]

[vgninja]

There were a couple Berzerk references on Futurama. The first were in an episode in season 1, "Fear of a Bot Planet". In one part of the episode, a couple of robots say "Get the Humanoid", "Get the Intruder". The second was in "Anthology of Interest 2" in the section where Fry asked "what if life was more like a video game". Near the end of this segment, a robot from Berzerk makes an appearance.

[Deleted]

I can confirm what vgninja just posted as I've seen all seasons of Futurama on DVD about a few weeks ago.

[YourAverageJoe]

Me too, although I didn't get those until he pointed them out...never played those two games.

[dire51]

Add another confirmation for the Futurama references. I'd also like to go on record as saying that I think "Raiders of the Lost Arcade" (the segment from "Anthology of Interest 2") should be required viewing for any gamer.

"It's Saturday night, I have no date, a two liter bottle of Shasta and my all-Rush mix tape. Let's rock."

[zzz]

If you're still waiting for the blurb about the bootlegs/knock-offs... honestly, are they really any more interesting than something like Project Renegade? I already wrote that bit about the MSX release, half of the others aren't even emulated, and, really, who gives a shit anyway? If you'd still like to put it in there at the end, then that's cool, but I really don't care.

[Discoalucard]

Considering they're basically unofficial ports...yeah, they're pretty interesting.

At any rate, I just hadn't had the time to update it, but I put up some most of the rip-offs and stuck in the pop culture references. Thanks all!

[Deleted]

Just found out by watching The Simpsons on DVD that there's also a Berzerk reference on The Simpsons. In season 5 episode "Homer Goes to College", three nerds in the college greets Homer by using the lines "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!" and "Stop the humanoid!" from Berzerk.

Also, the screenshot caption for K-Razy Shoot Out is accidently "Robot Wars".

[wyrdwad]

Hey, I'm a bit tardy to the party, so I have yet to read this article... but every time I try to click on it, all I get is a blank page. All the other HG101 articles are linking just fine... but the Berzerk/Frenzy article seems broken, at least for me. Just FYI.

Also, I hope that article included some info on the Vectrex port of Berzerk!! (: I don't think I've seen a single reference to a Vectrex game on here yet, and admittedly, that was my main reason in clicking on the article: I wanna see some Vectrex screenshots on here! (:

-Tom

[zzz]

Yeah, I can back this up.

[Discoalucard]

Weird. It used to be working yesterday, but I reuploaded it after correcting a spelling error. Maybe that screwed up somethhing? I'll check it when I get back home.

[Deleted]

The page is working now.

[johnh]

Ah, it -is- nice to see more classic-era games here. (Although I could gripe that Sinistar's "Beware, I LIVE!" is slightly more menacing than "Intruder alert!" But, eh.)