Clones & Ports of Stern's Berzerk 1980

This article is concerned with computer-game clones and ports of Stern Electronics' Berzerk and/or Exidy's Targ coinop, both of 1980. Berzerk-likes are defined by me as shoot 'em ups that feature 4-way or 8-way single-unit movement and firing in a maze-like killzone presented on a fixed-screen, flip-screen or scrolling playfield. In true Berzerk-likes a life is lost by coming into contact with the walls of mazes, which are electrified or otherwise lethal.

The article is only concerned with Berzerk clones and ports that appeared on Western computer game machines. The clones and ports are presented chronologically.

Maze-like Berzerk games are not the same as Robotron games (open-slather) or Commando games (scrolling playfields). However, all three come under run and gun games.

Berzerk Clones

Attack Force TRS-80 1980

Bill Hogue & Jeff Konyu of Big Five Software coded Attack Force in 1980 for the TRS-80. Attack Force is "run and gun" shoot 'em up based on Exidy's Targ coinop of 1980. Attack Force features 4-way variable-rate movement and firing over block-grid mazes guarded by ramships and flagships.

Robot Attack TRS-80 1981

Bill Hogue & Jeff Konyu of Big Five Software coded Robot Attack in 1981 for the TRS-80. The difference between Robot Attack and Attack Force of 1980 is that in Robot Attack you have 8-way movement and firing (diagonal) instead of just 4-way. A clone of Stern Electronics' Berzerk of 1980, Robot Attack also features over one dozen speech-sounds and a text-scroller intro that evokes Star Wars.

Castle Wolfenstein Apple 2 1981

Wizard of Wor Commodore 64 1982

Midway's Wizard of Wor coinop of 1981 was ported to the Commodore 64 in 1982 by Jeff Bruette for Commodore. A Berzerk-like (Stern Electronics, 1980), Wizard of Wor is a highly playable fixed-screen run n gun maze-shooter featuring 2-player coop, smooth sprite-shifting and 4-way movement and firing.

Paradroid Commodore 64 1985

Gauntlet Commodore 64 1986

Atari Games' Gauntlet coinop of 1985 was ported to C64 by Bob Armour of Gremlin Graphics for US Gold in 1986. Gauntlet is an 8-way run n gun and hack n slash game that features smooth scrolling and a max of 50 on-screen sprites with no slowdown.

Gauntlet 2 was ported to the C64 by Stuart Gregg in 1987; the isometric Gauntlet 3 was ported to C64 by Martin Howarth in 1991.

Gauntlet Atari ST 1987

Adventure Soft ported Atari Games' 32-color Gauntlet coinop of 1985 to the 16-color Atari ST in 1987. Atari ST Gauntlet was programmed by Graham E. Lilley and drawn by Teoman Irmak with assistance from Angus Irons and Simon Lucy. Gauntlet sound was converted to the Atari ST by 2 Bit Systems Replay. Note how the Atari ST version of Gauntlet lacks the cool character selection screen that practically every other version of Gauntlet featured. In addition, the scrolling is choppy and the game slows down when the sprite-count increases.

Garrison Amiga 1987

Digital Dreams released Garrison for the Amiga/C64 in 1987/88. Garrison is a Gauntlet clone that is much better than the Gauntlet ports. The Amiga version was programmed by Andreas C. Hommel whereas Jörn Galka handled the C64 conversion.

Into the Eagle's Nest Atari ST 1987

Pandora / Mindscape released Into the Eagle's Nest for 8- and 16-bit micros in 1986-87. Kevin Parker programmed the ST/Amiga versions.

Andrew Challis coded the C64 version whereas Kevin Parker coded the ZX Spectrum version:

Alien Syndrome Commodore 64 1988

Tim Rogers ported Sega's Alien Syndrome coinop of 1987 to the C64 in 1988. Run and gun.

Robotz Atari ST 1990

Scott Williams of Project X coded Robotz for the Atari ST in 1990.

Alien Breed Amiga 1991

Cannon Fodder Amiga 1993

Sensible Software's Cannon Fodder is a mouse-driven point-and-click run and gun game originally coded for the Amiga. Cannon Fodder employs a modified engine of Sensible Software's English Football Computer Games.

As one the highlights of the Amiga-games catalogue Cannon Fodder features smooth scrolling, precise controls, great graphics and excellent music and sound effects.

Cannon Fodder was designed by Jonathan "Jops" Hare and coded by Jools Jameson. Its graphics were drawn by Stoo Cambridge and its audio was assembled by Richard Joseph and Allister Brimble.

Cannon Fodder was ported to ST, MS-DOS and Archimedes. Offering more of the same, Cannon Fodder 2 was released in 1994 on Amiga and MS-DOS only.

Berzerk Ports

Berzerk Atari 8 Bit 1983

Berzerk was ported to the Atari 8 bits in 1983 by Carlos Smith & Mike Horowitz of Atari. It employs 8-way movement, 8-way fire and sampled speech aka speech synthesis.

cf.

Lilura1 cRPG

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Berzerk Clones and Ports (Berzerk-likes)