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One often questions me, "Why a
Berzerk cabinet?", my answer is this: it's got to do with it's history. It's the only arcade game in known to have actually claimed a human life, well two to be exact. The first was was a young 19 year old man named Jeff Dailey in 1981, whom suffered a massive
heart attack right after topping an astounding high score of 16,660 (chilling), the other an 18 year old named Peter Burkowski, whom like Jeff, ran the high score to new levels then mysteriously died shortly afterwards. Whether or not the
game brought on the death of these two young men is not clear, but I know for a fact that Berzerk is addictive
and extremely stressful on the higher levels making it a classic by it's own rights. Take a look at the face of the man in the lower left corner on the Monitor Bezel, that's what you'll look like after 5,000 points. Berzerk!
The original game was designed by Alan McNiel and Tony Martin of Stern Corp. in 1980. It was a hit in the arcade simply because of the attention getting voice "simulation". Back then, synthesized voice streams were cutting edge. I remember as a kid hearing that game in the corner of the arcade, blasting "intruder alert ... intruder alert". What really blew my mind was hearing that it detected a coin in my pocket as I walked by. How did it know??? Berzerk has a fairly easy game concept. Run
through a maze and shoot everything that moves. Well, easy enough right...
WRONG! Throw in electrified walls and several homing robots picks up the pace,
now add Evil Otto Evil Otto, the little smiley face that wouldn't hurt a fly, well not to mention a few robots and of course YOU! Evil Otto, is a very non-prejudice, unforgiving, little pain in the ass! When he shows up at the front door, it's time to hit the back. He passes through walls, runs over his own robots, and cannot be killed. He is your worst nightmare. He will find you and he WILL kill you. What's funny about Evil Otto is there have been many thousands of Video Game 'villains' over time but he is one you can never forget. I can only lend this to his simplistic nature and the fact that he just keeps smiling. Almost is if he is in hysterics. He's a cross between 'Have A Nice Day' and 'The Terminator'. At any rate, that is a very brief history of Berzerk, the game. On to IM Berzerk, the cabinet. My MAME project began in October, when I was
surfing the net and passed by the Arcade at Home site. I've been there
hundreds of times over the past four years or so, but I never noticed the
"Cabinet" section. When I did, a whole new door opened up for my
MAME emulator. Wow, the thought of building my own cabinet was well within
my reach. The next few weeks, I did a mass amount of research. I
read several sites with instructions, layouts, tips, hints, etc. on
building a cabinet. I was determined to make my own. I learned
how to make a Spinner, all about Keyboard encoding, all about graphics and just
about EVERYTHING you can imagine about video games and cabinet construction.
However, my idea of a cabinet did not end at MAME. I wanted an all around
cabinet. One that would also play Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari VCS,
and Commodore 64 games. Not to mention the rest of the emulators out
there. I wanted the Ultimate Home Video Game machine. Go to the Construction
link and watch IM Berzerk come to fruition. |
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On a dreary, rainy day, in the back of a old Subaru wagon... Frenzy came home. |
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and things really get
moving. 