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.

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 1987 ZX Spectrum

Kevin Parker's 1987 ZX Spectrum version is shown because it has the best viewport of the 8 bit versions.

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.

Chaos Engine Amiga 1993: NODE ACTIVATED

Developed by the Bitmap Brothers in 1993 for ST/Amiga, The Chaos Engine is a top-down run and gun game that features 2-player coop and 8-way scrolling and firing. In one-player mode the AI controls the other soldier.

And while its audio-visuals are top-tier its scrolling is not silky-smooth and its collision detection is off, just like Xenon 2. And I considered TCE overrated, even back in the day. Just like Xenon 2.

I believe that such assets and "character builds" would have been better employed in a tactical turn-based game.

TCE coded by Steve Cargill. Graphician was Dan Malone. Audio by Richard Joseph.

Chaos Engine IBM PC 1994

Scott Walsh of Wave Software converted the 16-bit Chaos Engine of 1993 to IBM PC MS-DOS in 1994. The 256-color VGA 320x200 is superior to the Amiga version in terms of framerate.

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)