In 1980, Stern Electronics released a multidirectional shooter game with the title Berzerk. This game was programmed by Alan McNeil and it was among the first games to use voice synthesis. Mr. McNeil stated he came with the idea of the game after having a dream in which he had to fight robots. He also named the game after the Berserker series of science fiction novels by Fred Baberhagen.
In Berzerk, the player controls a stick-figure man who is in a set of mazes that are full of robots who are in the hunt for “the humanoid.” To advance from one maze to the next, the player must escape through one of the openings located in the maze (usually opposite to where the player enters or on either the top or bottom of the maze) while destroying the robots in them. The player character has a laser weapon that can be fired in eight directions. The game has 876 unique maze layouts but there are 65,536 rooms to play through! The player can be killed if shot by any of the robots, by hitting an exploding robot, by hitting the electrified maze walls….
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