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| "Know whadda mean, Stern?" (image from the Gameex forums) |
To know Stern is to… know more about Stern than I did yesterday! It’s a relatively obscure developer, making pinball machines before a short-lived segue into the video game market as Stern Electronics.
Brothers Gary and Sam Stern (raised by stern parents, no doubt) originally had ties to fellow pinball manufacturer Williams, with Sam owning half of that company. Eventually that stake was sold to Seeburg, a manufacturer of jukeboxes and other coin-operated entertainment, and the brothers started their own business.
Stern Electronics’ biggest hit by far was Berzerk, with an armed human trapped inside a maze teeming with hostile robots. It was so exciting for the time that it caused at least two fatal heart attacks, but that didn’t stop the coins from rolling in! Stern also distributed a handful of Konami games in the United States, most notably Super Cobra. I’ll save those for the gigantic Konami feature that will come later, except for Astro Invader and The End, which we’ll examine right here.
Stern’s output is minimal next to other pre-crash game makers, in both quality and overall industry impact. The company pretty much began and ended with Berzerk. Sam Stern died shortly after the video game crash in 1984, and Gary closed up shop a year after that. These days, Berzerk is in the hands of Atari, a fitting home considering that it was one of the most popular titles on the 2600 and 5200.
Thanks to Wikipedia for the historical information, by the way.
BERZERK
Played: In a bowling alley in Portland, but mostly on the Atari 2600
Another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, humanoid. You’re trapped in a structure with infinite rooms, all patrolled by hostile robots. These bulky androids aren’t too bright and aren’t too fast (at least at first...), but they’re nevertheless dangerous, firing lasers when you fall into their sights. Be sure to blast them first, using the surrounding walls as cover. Don’t get too close to the walls, they’re electrified!
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Each room contains a random number of robots. |
Also, don’t loiter, because Evil Otto will eventually be alerted to your presence. This bouncing ball of brutality can’t be destroyed or even halted with your shots… the moment you see him, head to the nearest exit. Alternately, you can use the smiling sphere as a wrecking ball, smashing any robots on his way to you. Clear all the robots in a room and you’ll get a bonus! Leave some standing in your mad dash for the door, and you’ll get an insult.
One headlining feature of Berzerk is its synthesized speech. Voice was a luxury in 1980 that few video games could afford, but there are a lot of samples here, with words chained together to form simple phrases. These phrases are played at different lengths and pitches, making it seem like you’re surrounded by a shouting mob of angry robots. “Chase it! Kill it!” Hey, watch the pronouns! We organics have genitals, you know! Er, maybe I should stick to survival, rather than sensitivity training…
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| There was a Berzerk board game, because every popular arcade game had to have one. For some reason, Evil Otto is portrayed as an iron-headed cowboy with huge muscles and an oversized belt buckle. Can someone explain this? I don't follow the logic. (image from SydLexia) |
And forget the flickery, buggy Vectrex version! Like those ports of Doom to the Neo-Geo, it’s just the wrong hardware for the job. It’s like trying to cut a birthday cake with a jackhammer.
FRENZY
Played: At Chuck E. Cheese in Grand Rapids, when the words “Chuck E. Cheese” meant something
Sequels were new territory for video games in 1981. Either you got more of the same (Exciting New Pac-Man Plus, Asteroids Deluxe), or a refined expansion of the original (Galaga, Ms. Pac-Man), or the same game with a lot of extra content haphazardly dumped into it (Stargate, Millipede).
Frenzy took a different approach, with the same core gameplay but new features that profoundly alter the experience. First, the mazes are larger this time, meaning that you have more ground to cover- and more risk of running into robots- when finding an exit. Second, the electrified walls are gone, replaced with two new partitions. Purple bubble walls can be carved through with your shots, while solid white walls reflect them… possibly back at you!
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| White walls can be used to ricochet your shots, but beware! Sometimes those bullets will bounce right back to you! |
You have to be a lot more cautious about firing in Frenzy. You’ll also need to pay attention to where the robots are firing. Even if the skeletons and tank droids aren’t shooting directly at you, their bullets could reach you anyway with a few lucky bounces. There are also special stages with a large object as a centerpiece… a factory that churns out robots, a giant reel to reel that programs them, and a super-sized Evil Otto which strikes you down if you kill one of his offspring. These don’t make much of a difference to the gameplay, certainly not compared to the new wall types, but they at least add variety, along with an incentive to get as far as you can before the robots turn you into ash.
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| The ColecoVision version of Frenzy. In contrast with the arcade game, which makes your hero look like an electrified Oscar statue, getting blasted here looks like it... hurts slightly. |
It’s a brave sequel, but Frenzy wasn’t as popular as the first game. The drastic drop in voice samples couldn’t have helped… the robots just don’t seem as eager to kill you anymore. This is one of those rare cases where you’re better off with the home console version. Frenzy on the ColecoVision adds music in the key of a science-fiction dystopia, injecting some much-needed intensity into the action, and the poses for the humanoid look more natural. Stern’s version of the character looks like a stick figure, while Coleco’s leans into each shot with dynamic poses. And when he gets blasted, it looks like it hurts.
THE END
Played: In MAME
Video game historian Jeremy Parish sagely observed that there was a pecking order for Konami arcade ports. The good game consoles got classics like Time Pilot, Gyruss, and Frogger. For lesser game systems, it was The End for them! Or Astro Invader, or Turtles. They’re some really low-grade cuts of meat, and they’re all you had to gnaw on if you grew up with the miserable Emerson Arcadia.
Anyway. The End is a shoot ‘em up, similar to Galaxian, but built on the crumbling foundation of one of the dumbest play mechanics you’re likely to find in a single screen shooter. Insectoid foes that look like water striders swoop down from a UFO at the top of the screen, zig-zagging around your shots and stealing your barriers brick by brick. Eventually, the bugs will spell out END with the bricks, and that’s your cue to drop in another coin or walk away. I suggest the latter course of action.
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| The end is near. (Thankfully.) |
There’s a handful of annoyances in The End that sticks it in the bargain bin of fixed screen shooters. The first is that the barriers, which you could shoot in Space Invaders, are impenetrable in The End, limiting your firing real estate to about half the screen. The second is that these insects are unpredictable, and delight in dancing around your shots, often hiding behind the barriers so you can’t shoot them at all until they’ve already got a chunk of the wall in their claws.
Finally, The End is a very dull, listless, creatively parched game. You get the impression that Konami’s programmers were chained to their desks during the development process, because it’s agonizingly clear that they didn’t want to make this, and wanted to get the project behind them as quickly as possible. You could give The End credit for having a boss, but it’s a very lame boss, with the UFO at the top of the screen sweeping back and forth like a carnival target, waiting for you to hit its weak point. It’s like the flagship boss from GORF, with the chaos of falling ship debris and the menace stripped away. Unflavored for me, thanks!
The End. It’s a game you can play. If you want. You probably won’t.
ASTRO INVADER
Played: In a castle-shaped roller rink in Greenville MI
“Behold, my latest scheme to take over the Earth! A GIANT VENDING MACHINE! I’m calling it Plan 7-11 From Outer Space.”
“Neebnorp, you’re an idiot.”
Astro Invader is pretty much Space Invaders (and it looks and sounds the part, likely running on the same hardware), if the invaders were loaded into a Coke machine. Tiny creatures which look distressingly like the face huggers from Alien are dropped into roughly a dozen slots. When one slot is overloaded, the alien at the bottom of the stack is dispensed. Instead of a burst of caffeine or fruity-licious flavor, the bug delivers an electrified blast, stretching across the ground and scorching your tank if it’s nearby.
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| I'm watching my figure. Does this thing have Diet Creepy Space Alien? Or Creepy Space Alien Zero; that would taste better. |
Killing the bugs is optional as long as you’re not too close to them when they hit the ground. However, UFOs occasionally come out of the evil vending machine, from the left, center, and right of the screen, and these must be destroyed. If they touch the ground, you’re toast no matter how far you are from the point of impact.
There were tons of Space Invaders clones in arcades when Astro Invader was released, but this is original enough that it doesn’t feel like reheated leftovers. The direction Konami went with it is strange and subject to taste, but you can’t deny that you were sweating while fending off an endless storm of tiny aliens, cans of Tab, and Gardetto’s snack mix.
By the way, Konami was calling itself “Leijac” in 1980, which sounds more like a French-Canadian lumberjack than a video game company. Maybe they should have distributed Bally-Midway's Timber in Japan...
TAZZ-MANIA
Played: A little arcade in Hastings. Who knows what’s in that building now?
Come to Tazz-Mania! I guess.
This has nothing to do with a certain furry tornado from a Warner Brothers cartoon. It’s actually a shooter, with a green gremlin spraying bullets from a machine gun. The firing rate on the gun is impressive, but the range is anything but, so Tazz will have to get up close and personal to nail the many targets scattered across the playfield. While he’s slaughtering dozens of random objects which look like they’ve been sprayed with radium, larger enemies bounce around the screen, threatening to collide with him. Also, the walls slowly push inward, forcing you to work quickly to keep from getting crushed. Blast all the thingamabobs in the stage and an exit opens to the next one. Clear two stages and you get a brief bonus stage, with numbers that add to your score and smart bombs that add to your supply.
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| Blah, blah, blah! Yakety-schmackety. |
Tazz-Mania is functional as a game, but without the twin stick firing of Robotron: 2084, you’ll have to lock yourself in place with the fire button and aim your blaster with the joystick. This leads to a lot of stop/start gameplay, with Tazz frequently holding his position to shoot a couple of glowing doodads… then moving on to the next couple of targets… then the next… then the next. Whee, fun. Tazz’s gun never seems like adequate protection against the enemies in each stage, either. They have an irksome habit of threading the needle between the directions he can fire, and with the bullets having such short reach, he can’t attack them from a distance, either.
The game works, but considering the high bar of excellence set by Robotron: 2084, maybe Tazz-Mania should have worked a little harder.
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