Frenzy (1982)

Name:Frenzy
Number:136
Year:1982
Publisher:Stern
Developer:Stern
Genre:Top-Down
Difficulty:4/5
Time:30 minutes
Won:Not possible

It feels like forever since I've played Berzerk, but it hasn't been much further away than this sequel was released in reality. Funny how that worked out, I doubt I'll ever get that lucky again. Frenzy is advertised as much the same as the original, ton of evil robots, shoot them, watch out for big nasty bad guy Evil Otto. Simple, but hopefully effective.

The dotted walls are shootable while the others reflect shots

Starting the game up, I'm actually struck by how surprisingly bad the game. A major arcade game that's still a single stick shooter? What madness is this? Just wander around some rooms shooting at things to get a highscore. Compared to the other hits of 1982, this feels downright boring. Wow, two different enemies types along with a special boss monster that instantly reappears, how interesting. Shootable walls that don't kill you, just like Snipes. And I'm out of interesting things to say.

If its not clear, I don't think very highly of Frenzy. It just feels like it brings nothing to the table. While credit must be given to the original Berzerk for its important place in gaming history, Frenzy feels like a rehash of the original. Other people had expanded quite well on the formula since the original's release as titles like Shamus and Snipes, while not the greatest games ever made, tried to create consistent level design and expanded on the random level design respectively to some success. Frenzy has four variations on single-screen mazes and those variations don't actually do anything, though you could be tricked into thinking they did.

I've seen difficulty suggested as to the reason why people dislike this game, and I think that's a load of baloney. Sinister and Robotron, both harder than this, but they had a key element. They were exciting, dying felt frustrating, and Sinistar was terrifying at times. I feel mild annoyance at having died in this game. Don't get me wrong, I don't feel like I lost in a fair fight, but at the same time, I don't care all that much. Its not fun and it doesn't add anything to the formula.

Weapons:
Generic laser weapon. 1/10

Enemies:
Two different sprites for a slowly approaching enemy that shoots at you, along with Evil Otto, who just runs at you, through walls, and can now be shot and killed. He just respawns and returns faster. You no longer die by walking into enemies, but that's something that so rarely comes up I'm surprised anyone ever noticed. Interestingly, the enemies shoot much the same way as the player. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
You'd think a level where you can see a giant Evil Otto would be special, but no, all that happens is that if you kill Otto four more pop up. Otherwise the design of this game feels like it puts the player in unavoidable deaths an uncomfortably high number of times. 0/10

Player Agency:
It is a pain to shoot diagonally in MAME. I have died quite a bit because I meant to shoot diagonally, but couldn't, or didn't mean to and did. I do feel like the aiming in this game is slightly crap in general. You don't get a proper center for things, so you aim quite offset from where you should be aiming in some directions. To add insult to injury, the player moves at a slow pace. 2/10

Interactivity:
You can shoot some walls, while others reflect shots. This is universal among you and the enemies. 2/10

Atmosphere:
None.

Graphics:
Its depicted simply but effectively. Which should be the end of it, but for some reason the color of everything changes between levels and it drives me up a wall. 0/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
Simple, flat 8-bit or so sound effects. 1/10

That's 7, which is actually 2 above Berzerk and about equal to the game I said was better in some regards, Shamus.

Lost Tomb

The resolution of this game is weird

Name:Lost Tomb
Number:101
Year:1982
Publisher:Stern
Developer:Stern
Genre:Top-Down Shooter
Difficulty:5/5
Time:50 minutes

Indiana Jones-styled settings are a rare beast in games. I think the biggest concentration of them exist in the adventure field, where the using your noggin part of the original films really comes to the forefront. It doesn't happen much in straight-forward shooters because people prefer having more than six shots in their magazines. There are games set in modern times that take cues from those films, but treasure-hunting is thinly important to the game. Lost Tomb is all about that, full hog into treasure-hunting.

The introduction tells us the basics of the game before it starts. Open chests to reset the timer and to find the key out of the room. Shoot everything in your way. The intro looks like a crappy CGA game, but once the actual game starts its nice...for all of 5 seconds. This game feels like its being run on too fast hardware, and this is supposedly the easy variation on the game. There are two analog sticks, you shoot with one and move with the other. You press it once and suddenly you're firing your whole clip. Its more than 6 shots, and seemingly I get unlimited, but its pretty freaky regardless. Enemies rush at me.

After getting through the first level, which takes longer than you might thing, I have an option of where to go next. Left or right. Taking too long, which is just enough time to actually reach one destination, will cause bats to start chasing after you. Like I said, this is the easy variation, there's a hard one. This doesn't even pretend to be anything other than a quarter-eater here. It has the audacity and I mean audacity to ask for a quarter for a whip.

You have two weapons, the pistol which fires automatically until a certain number of bullets are on-screen, then you have to wait for some to disappear. The other weapon is a whip, which destroys most things in a gradually growing circle around you. You seem to have unlimited ammo, but the whip is very limited. Hence in some places the game offers you 25 whips for 1 credit.

And I just know there's something here I'm missing. I sometimes stumble my way into a fairly solid playthrough of the level, only to suddenly get blindsided by some element I wasn't keeping track of. Or couldn't keep track of, because there's so much stuff you need to pay attention to that you're going to miss it. Doesn't help that the game forces you to wait about 20 seconds before dumping you back at the beginning of the level, minus any chests. It just feels like the game is flipping you off for quarters while also being completely doable if you know how.

Let's talk about the treasure aspect. Chests do three things, give you points, give you either whips or increased ammo, and reset the level timer. If the level timer runs out, the walls start shooting at you. As a result, if you've already cleared out all the chests in a level, its very possible to get stuck in an endless loop of dying. The whips are very necessary, since they can mean the difference between slow death and fast death.

It doesn't help too that if you get too distracted by shooting enemies, they can build a nest somewhere and overwhelm you by sheer numbers, because in a sense, enemies respawn. What happens is that at the beginning of the level a bunch of enemy spawn points are placed. After a random amount of time, they'll spawn from there, and continue to do so until you die. What happens is that those enemies can decide to create another spawn point. Which means if there's some place fairly blocked off the entire area may be swarming with enemies.

Did I mention there are about three levels (repeated through many rooms) in the game, and one of them blocks off the key you need, which frequently results in the whole area being filled with spawn points? As a result, I couldn't muster up the strength to beat this game. Even though I started using savestates to reduce the loading times, and having the same situation every time, it was just too much of a pain to try to finish. Lost Tomb is comparable to the kind of death metal albums that are a non-stop onslaught of brutality. Fun to a select few, but the rest of us mere mortals enjoy a few breaks.

Weapons:
The gun is standard, but the whip is nice. I understand why they limited it, because I would have spammed it a lot more if it wasn't. 2/10

Enemies:
A few variants on enemies that just wander towards you. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
I hope the game actually has more than 3 levels, but for the early part of the game, this is a poor showing. 1/10

Player Agency:
For a twin-stick shooter, it sure felt finnicky. Quite a few times the controls died on me, resulting in my death. Just another reason why I hated this. 2/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
The intro text was kind of spooky, but then the game got started and it got much less impressive. 1/10

Graphics:
For an arcade game, its not very impressive to look at. Our hero looks like the kind of person to star in a hipster pixel art indie game, and the rest falls into the extremely generic. 1/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
Generic bloops and blips. 1/10

That's 9.

I would avoid this because some of the issues I had seem to stem from poor emulation of the game. I can't imagine it playing this badly on actual hardware, but it still wouldn't be very fun.

It seems like every title I've played from 1982 is hitting that obnoxiously hard difficulty level. Perhaps it'll get better once I start hitting more home computer titles, but things are looking to be down for the foreseeable future.

Game 21: Berzerk

Name:Berzerk
Number:21
Year:1980*
Publisher:Stern
Developer:Stern
Genre:Top-Down Shooter
Difficulty:2/5
Time:Under an hour

Ah, Stern, a company I have heard so much about, yet played so little. From my perspective they are pinball making gods, and I am not good at pinball. Their cabinets have some of the most amazing art I've seen. You can probably tell that I have that opinion if you've ever seen my art. The cabinet for this game was probably similarly amazing, but we're not here to talk about cabinet art. I knew basically nothing about this game going in, except it inspired Night Stalker in some way, and that it is believed to be the first game to cause someone's death. A fact, Wikipedia, curiously, does not mention anywhere. Enough of that, how does it hold up today?

At first, this seems like any shooter it helped inspire, freedom of movement, one shot at a time (both player and enemy, because of memory limitations) and a lot of enemies to kill. This differs from its descendants because enemies are really, really dumb. You see, the walls in this game are insta-kill traps, and what kills you kills the enemy. Enemies at first stand still, but sometimes they decide to walk in one direction. They don't stop until they see you.

The game doesn't really seem to have much of a difficulty curve, I've noticed. Its pure luck if you get thrown into a situation you can get out of at your current skill level at any moment. Enemies are laid down randomly too, and you need to make a mad dash to kill the ones closest to you before they get you. That's about it for the core gameplay.

Weapons:
While the blaster is satisfying to use, it does have some odd angles vertically. 1/10

Enemies:
They're there and they're dumb as rocks. 0/10

Non-Enemies:
None. 0/10

Levels:
A handful of simple mazes. 0/10

Player Agency:
The player moves horizontally faster than he does vertically. Its really annoying. You can also do diagonal shots. If you're mad. 2/10

Interactivity:
None. 0/10

Atmosphere:
I can't say that it does. 0/10

Graphics:
The robots are nice, but there's something off about the human character. 1/10

Story:
It doesn't matter. 0/10

Sound/Music:
No music, simple Atari blips/bloops. Not stellar, but what do you expect? Its Atari, it has a charm all its own. 1/10

That's 5. Ultimately, its not really fair to compare a simple game known as an arcade classic on a scale primarily built for something like Doom or Duke Nukem 3D. But I must, and it shall be so poorly rated.

*1982 was the Atari version I played, but I'm dumping this under 1981 because I like to put the earliest year and I don't think I'll have many other 1980 games. This will quietly disappear if that proves untrue.