Berzerk: The Board Game
Berzerk: The Board Game
Today I'm going to be reviewing another curiosity of the 1980s, a Milton Bradley board game based on the classic 1980 arcade game Berzerk by Stern Electronics. Berzerk was a smash hit in it its day, as you might have guessed by the fact that I'm reviewing a tabletop adaptation of it. But for some reason, it has not endured in the public consciousness the way that Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and Centipede have. Part of that is because Nintendo and Namco actively use the Donkey Kong and Pac-Man IPs, whereas Stern Electronics went under in 1985. But that doesn't fully explain it. After all, Q*bert is still pretty recognizable in 2024, and it was released by the equally defunct game company Gottlieb. And the weird thing is, Berzerk isn't just a profitable game from its era; it's also historic. Berzerk was the second video game ever to feature voice clips, and the first good game. Sun Electronic's Stratovox may have beat Berzerk to market by five months, but Berzerk had superior clarity and breadth. Stratovox was a weak Galaxian clone that had four garbled phrases comprised of eight unique words; Berzerk had 30 unique words that it combined into numerous unmistakable phrases. Berzerk also holds a much weirder place in history: it is on record as the first video game that someone died while playing. Okay, let's get into this...
Before we delve into the board game, it would probably be useful to talk more about the arcade game. Berzerk is a game where you play as a guy trapped in a deadly maze filled with deadly robots. You may think that's redundant, but it's actually not: the maze has electric walls for some reason. As previously mentioned, this game was a pioneer of speech in video games; the robots constantly shout things like "Kill the intruder!" and "The humanoid must not escape!" at you. It cost Stern roughly $1000 per word to put voice clips in this game. And while $30,000 is drop in the bucket of a modern video game budget, it was an outrageous amount of money to spend in 1980. The basic gameplay is simple: destroy the robots, don't get killed, move to the next room. If you linger too long in a room, Evil Otto will appear. Evil Otto is the game's persistent and iconic primary antagonist. He is an invincible smiley face who chases you down and kills you, and he walks effortlessly through walls as part of this pursuit. Otto was named after a security guard at Stern Electronics who was a complete dick to the programmers, because apparently even in the 1980s all cops were bastards. Berzerk has two interesting features that were atypical of video games of the era. First off, you can leave a room without clearing it. The robots will mock you and call you a "chicken" for doing this, but the wall and robot placement in the rooms don't always make it practical or prudent for you to purge each area of robots, especially once Evil Otto starts hunting you. Secondly, damage is completely symmetrical: anything that can kill you in this game can also kill the robots. This list of ways to die includes: robot bullets, debris from an exploding robot, collision with a robot, collision with a wall, and collision with Evil Otto. This adds a considerable amount of depth and strategy to the game, since manipulating the robots into killing each other is a viable, if not superior, alternative to facing them head-on. Additionally, there is a maximum amount of enemy bullets that can be on screen at once, ranging from 0-5, depending on the robots' color. Consequently, the robots in early stages of the game are often largely helpless while their available shots creep harmlessly towards distant walls.
I picked this board game up probably not long after I picked up the Centipede board game, at a now-defunct comic book store where my brother used to work. Unlike Centipede, this game was sealed when I bought it. As you can see, it started its life at Kmart, where it sat on sheves through several markdowns. I have no idea what the original MSRP was, but it was marked down several times before eventually selling for $3.00. At some point long after that, it most likely made its way to the Revere Flea Market, where it was purchased by my brother's boss, who then sold it to me for $10. Sealed collectibles have skyrocketed in price since the time I purchased this, with the lowest sealed copy on eBay having an asking price of over $100. As you may have guessed from the fact that THIS IS A FUCKING PRODUCT REVIEW, my copy is no longer sealed. However, I don't feel especially bad about it. Here's why...
The whole appeal of sealed product is that it is presumably in premium condition; a sealed box of Waterford champagne flutes is worthless if I can hear the shards rattling around inside. And as you can see, this box is not in great shape. The back is... burned? I think? It looks like it sat on someone's radiator for the better part of a decade. That, or we're looking at a brown brain-eating mold. Actually, that would explain so much. This box has been sitting in my bedroom about five feet from my bed for somewhere between 16-18 years. It's not my fault that I gave up on SydLexia.com! The mold has slowly drained me of my will to do anything except watch Mr. Ballen videos on YouTube. Please send antibiotics. Oh, and if you're in the age demographic that has any interest in reading my site, your eyesight probably isn't what it used to be. Here's a larger image of the back of the box to help satisfy your curiosity. Now let's open up that box.
Fuck! Since this was sealed, there is assembly required. Past Syd is a piece of shit. He could have gotten me an unsealed copy of this game that was better condition and that was already assembled, but did he? No, he didn't. The assembly itself is actually very minor, the problem is that there are stickers. Stickers are the bane of my existence, especially when it comes to Lego sets; I need them lined up perfectly. I literally ordered three additional sticker sets for my Lego Atari 2600 because I kept failing to line the stickers up to my satisfaction, even when using popular tricks. Thankfully, this situation had much lower stakes. A completed Lego set is a display piece for years to come; I am probably never going to play this board game ever again. Also, let's take a moment to talk about that box partition because that certainly is a choice. Growing up, nearly all of the board games that I owned had a plain white box partition, because why would you waste money printing something fancy onto the box partition? It's pointless. I am not entirely sure how to describe the aesthetic of the Berzerk box partition, but I'd like to give it a shot: it looks like a plaque you'd find hanging in any given 1980s sewing room. Only instead of "HOME SWEET HOME", it reads "BERZERK: A MILTON BRADLEY GAME". It is extremely tacky in a way that only existed in this one specific decade. It looks like the wallpaper at an old person's house. This isn't your grandmother's wallpaper though, your grandmother had way better taste. This is the wallpaper at your grandmother's childless best friend's house. You ever get dragged to your grandmother's childless best friend's house as a kid? It was the worst. They would sit there drinking tea and ignoring you, and you'd just have to sit there quietly until it was time to go. And there were no toys to play with at this house, because this person never had kids, let alone grandkids. If you were lucky, maybe you'd get offered a dusty piece of unwrapped hard candy from a bowl that had been sitting on that coffee table since FDR was still alive. What I'm trying to say here is that pastel pink and orange is the single worst color pairing ever attempted, and it has fuck all to do with Berzerk. For anyone looking to print their own stickers or simply admire the artwork, here's the raw scan of the sticker sheet.
This is the board for Berzerk. The starting positions for the humainoid, the robots, and Evil Otto are all clearly marked. Interspersed throughout the board are red and yellow walls, which function similar to the walls in the arcade game; Evil Otto can pass through them, robots and the humainoid cannot. And speaking of Evil Otto, why the fuck does he look like Destro in this game? The designs for the robots and the humanoid are taken straight off the arcade cabinet, but Evil Otto's design is not. This Otto design is not found in the rarely seen arcade cabinet owner's manual, nor is it the Otto art from the Atari 2600 instruction manual. As far as I can tell, this art was created specifically for the board game. But why? Evil Otto is the one of the most iconic and recognizable features of Berzerk. I imagine that two things came into play here. First, while a fairly generic smiley face is scary as hell when it's rapidly bouncing across a video screen toward you with murderous glee, it is significantly less threatening when it's a pawn on a board. Secondly, there was no way to make Evil Otto proportional to the other pieces without drastically altering his appearance. Hence why they didn't use that rather cool Atari manual art either. The final result is a serviceable Evil Otto design that, while a little disappointing, definitely gets the job done. Oh, one last thing about the board: for absolutely no reason whatsoever, no piece can pass through the center square on the board.
Here's what the board looks like fully set up. The game's rules are actually pretty interesting, if not a little confusing. Each game is divided into three rounds. In each round, each player has a chance to play as both the human and the evil robots... maybe. As the humanoid, you get three lives total. Not three lives per round, three total. So if you manage to get killed three times in your first go as the human, you don't get to play as the human anymore. But that doesn't end the game. Under its stated rules, the game keeps going until three rounds end or until neither player has any humanoids left. In practice though, the game ends when one player has outscored the other and their opponent has no humanoids left. This is because of the game's scoring system: only the humanoid can score points. The humanoid gets 10 points for each robot they kill, and they get 60 bonus points if they kill all six robots in a single round. Once the humanoid has destroyed two robots, the villanous player may start moving Evil Otto. Once the human player has destroyed four robots, they may exit the maze by touching Evil Otto's starting space. Once this happens, the board is reset and the players switch perspectives. If at any point the human player is successfully attacked by a robot or Evil Otto when they have lives remaining, the humanoid returns to it starting space; enemy pieces remain where they are. Furthermore, enemy pieces cannot occupy the humanoid's starting space, so camping for instant kills isn't a viable strategy. Thus, the core gameplay is as follows: accumulate points with your humanoid, and block your opponent from scoring points as Team Otto. Sounds easy, right?
Well, it mostly is. But one thing to know is that the game HEAVILY favors the humanoid player. The humanoid goes first in every round. On their turn, they roll a six-sided die and move that many spaces. The humanoid can move horizontally and vertically, he cannot move through walls, he can kill robots on adjacent spaces while passing by them, and he can change directions. The Otto player also rolls a six-sided die. Then, they must split that roll between a minimum of two robots unless they roll a 1. Once two of their robots have been dispatched, they must now split their rolls between Evil Otto and two robots. In this scenario, Evil Otto gets priority. If they roll a 1, they must move Evil Otto one space. If they roll a two, they must move Evil Otto one space and one robot one space. Like the humanoid, robots can only move horizontally and vertically, they cannot move through walls, and they can change directions. Unlike the humanoid, the robots get kills by colliding directly with the humanoid, rather than from adjacent spaces. Meanwhile, Evil Otto can move in straight lines or diagonally, and can move through walls. However, unlike the other pieces, Otto cannot change directions. He moves in a chosen direction until you run out of moves or until he hits the edge of the board. So while the Otto player has the advanage of quantity, the human player has the advantage of quality; they can usually move their piece further in a single turn, and they can kill multiple robots in a single turn. But just as the video game gets more aggressive as it progresses, so does the board game. In the second round of the game, once two robots have been defeated, the Otto player is now only obligated to move Otto and one robot on each turn. In the third round, the Otto player only has to move one piece total once two of their robots are defeated. This is a very clever addition. Not only does it emulate the cadence of its source material, but it also allows the board game to move at a surprisingly agreeable pace. And in case you'd like to read the rules in full, here they are.
Is Berzerk a good board game? My verdict is a resounding yes. Not only does it treat its source material with surprising care, but unlike some of the other board games that I've reviewed, it's actually fun. Not as fun as thearcade game, mind you, but much more fun than a licensed board game from 1983 has any right to be. If you play one board game based on a video game about an immense maze full of murderous automatons, I highly suggest Berzerk. Thank you so much for reading this article. Also, I'd like to offer my condolences: your YouTube recommendations are about to be filled with videos on BERZERK: THE KILLER VIDEO GAME. Let me tell you something, it only killed two people, and only technically. Don't let anyone tell you there were three deaths: the Jeff Daily story is a hoax.
Posted by: Syd Lexia
11/03/24
