Intruder alert! Berzerk was one of the first arcade games with speech, combining phonetic segments into words, to provoke and taunt your dismal efforts :) This is what distinguished it from its simple gameplay and gained itself its cult following.

The gameplay itself is simple enough. All you have to do is kill the robots, and exit the screen to advance to the next screen. The only problem is that after the first screen the robots can shoot back, and in later levels can fire two shots at a time and move faster and faster.

Take too long on any one level and Evil Otto will appear, a bouncey smiling face(!) who tracks you and cannot be destroyed (by me anyway. I received a mail from a John Bono saying that you can kill Otto, but it requires a LOT of shots). The only way to avoid Otto is to leave the screen.

The robots can be kiled in a variety of ways: either by shooting them, by another robot shooting them, by a robot coming into contact with a wall or by Evil Otto hitting one of them.

Up to a maximum of 11 robots can appear on any screen. Your player dies by either being shot by a robot, coming into contact with a robot or exploding robot, hitting a wall or hitting Evil Otto.

Extra lives are awarded at 5,000 and 10,000 points.

The gap between your player's head and body is not a part of your player, and shots can pass through it.

Try to enter a screen from the left or right rather than the top or bottom.

If two robots are next to each other on the other side of a wall to you, walk back and forth to cause them to walk into each other and both be killed.

When shooting robots horizontally, move up towards them and aim low, as you can shoot them before they can get level with you.

Make use of the fact that on the earlier levels you can fire two shots at once and robots cannot until later screens.

When you first enter a new screen you will see the position of the robots before they can move or shoot, and you can move away from any danger before they attack.

If Evil Otto appears when there are still robots on screen, position the robots between yourself and Otto and they will die when he hits them.