You're alone in a maze filled with armed, hostile robots who only have one mission - to kill you. If you even so much as touch the walls, you'll wind up dead. You're a little bit faster than the robots, and you have human instinct on your side...but even that won't help you when Evil Otto, a deceptively friendly and completely indestructible smiley face, appears to destroy you if you linger too long in any one part of the maze. The object of the game? Try to stay alive however long you can. (Atari, 1981)

Despite such atrocities as the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man, Atari managed to turn out a fantastic version of Stern's hit arcade game. Almost flicker-free, and lacking only the arcade game's primitive speech synthesis (not that much of a loss, truth be told), Atari's Berzerk cartridge was a very good reason to own the 2600.

Rating:  Four quarters - a couple of minor irritants, but mostly a compelling and addictive game.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster