Beginning my quest to beat 104,680 by Ron Bailey

Its been well over a year since I have updated this website. My life has taken many twists and turns that I never saw coming and because of these events I had to set aside playing a game I hold dear in my heart aside for well over over. Earlier this week I finally got my Berzerk machine working in top order again. Back in October of 2013, yes 2 years ago, I had one of the greatest slow bullets games of my life going, I actually thought I had a chance at breaking my own record, however my machine had other plans. The game glitched, I essential saw a kill screen in Berzerk which started a series of probes and troubleshooting to my Berzerk that lead to several issues.

It has taken me two years to fix all those issues, and I think I finally have them all resolved!

So tonight I started my second quest in Berzerk! To beat Ron Bailey's score of 104,680 points that he achieved on June 30, 1984. Its been over 31 years since that score has been beat. Only on other man alive has seen a 6 digit score in fast bullets Berzerk, and his name is Joel West. I aim to become the third person in history to see a 6 digit score in this wonderful game that Alan McNeil as programmed.

Tonight I took my first step. I removed the slow bullets RC28 eproms, and installed my RC31 fast bullets eproms and started playing the game. The first 5 games I played were not all that great. My first game I did well to get 19K. Realize I have not played fast bullets in over 18 months, I was very happy with 19K, but my greatest game was my last.

I took a break after my scores started to go downhill, I re-watched myself playing, so where I was not doing well and went back to the machine. My first game was an improvement, I got 18K, however my second game was amazing. First off I went 20K on my first man. I have never done that in Fast Bullets before. Unfortunately this got me excited and I started making mistakes, however I never let a death affect me. I ended up with a score of 28,240. So close to my goal of 30K, yet so far away.

I've started my journey again, I look forward to updating this site with my progress. I have made new friends since I last posted here and I look forward to sharing their stories and successes as well as my own!

New score submitted to the random fast bullets scoreboard!

Hey fellow Berzerkers! Scores are beginning to slowly trickle in and please keep them coming! Mark Hoff submitted a score of 10,540 points in fast bullets random play Berzerk. I know a couple other people playing Berzerk are in the 15K ~ 20K range so lets get these scores coming and get some friend competition going to both boost the scores but also our Berzerking abilities!

Scoreboard is up and accepting scores!

I have a basic scoreboard now posted on the site located here called High Score List! Also we have a first enter to the list as well! Thomas Thunder with his personal best in Berzerk Slow Bullets random play with a score of 83,260 points on MAME! Here is the MARP (MAME Action Replay) of this performance!

Interviews, Score Boards and Site Updates coming!

Hey fellow Berzerkers! Its been a while since I've updated this website, been busy with life and work. Also I just finally got my Berzerk machine working again! Intruder Alert! Just wanted to let you know that I'm working on major updates and upgrades for the website. We will be tracking people'e personal best scores in all 4 variations of the game, regardless of MAME or Arcade, though it will be noted which score is which. The scores will be: Berzerk Slow Bullets Random Berzerk Slow Bullets Pattern Berzerk Fast Bullets Random Berzerk Fast Bullets Pattern Also I will be working on a page to add to the site so people can see everyone that is online currently playing Berzerk as well. If you have any thoughts or suggestions to help make the website better please let me know! Thanks again! Grant Thienemann aka Disjaukifa

The theory behind a 200K game of Berzerk Slow Bullets

So my attempt at my own record the other night got me thinking about what it would take to get 200,000 thousand points in Berzerk. Here is the short of my calculations.

• With no bonus I would have to kill 4,000 robots to get 200,000 points
• With bonus, taking into account the variation of number of robots in the room, it would be 3,700 ~ 3,800 robots (roughly). 
• We are talking about around 400 rooms to conquer 
• An average of 80 rooms per humanoid

Again this are not 100% accurate, but they are close. The real trick is not even the game but myself. My last game that was 137,140 points, I lost two lives due to my own errors, and one death was rather embarrassing. 

I believe in my core that 200K is possible, I actually believe that 500K is possible, 100K on average per man, but it would not easy, the biggest problem is not the game killing you but you killing yourself with simple mistakes. 

When I did my 199,860 game, I traversed 383 rooms, which is a lot but when you think that the game has 65,536 possible rooms, I just barely cracked 0.005% of all the possible rooms in the game. I know there are rooms I have never seen in the game, and those are the ones I'm most worried about, I've learned how to attack different rooms depending on the layout, without that knowledge, its all reflex. However reflex will only last so long, my 199,860 game was almost 2.5 hours, a 500K game is going to be closer to 6 hours with the way I play, I could speed up but I find my pace works well for me. 

I will be playing again this week, and I'll be pushing myself to play better and better, I'll break my own record, its not an "if", its a "when"!

Kill Screen in Berzerk at 137,140 points last night.

After getting 118K the other night I decided to play the Berzerk RC28 slow bullets again. I got such a sense nostalgia playing Berzerk last night. I haven't even owned the game for two years yet but playing it last brought back memories when Berzerk was the only game I owned. 

I would go into my basement at my old place, which wasn't insulated, with a light jacket, gloves and a hat to just play a game of Berzerk. I couldn't even stream back then, I was recording my games on my old iPod Touch resting against a lamp, it was a really shady setup but it worked and I loved every minute of it!

Last night was one of those night, everything felt right, and I was playing well! I had two dumb deaths, but I didn't let it get to me though, I rolled off the deaths and just kept on going. The most difficult thing about playing Berzerk is not letting the game get in your head, which even for a veteran Berzerker is not an easy thing to accomplish. 

I was at 137,140 points on my 4th man, with one man left in reserve. I was feeling good, I had a good pace, I was taking minimal risks but still playing safe. I actually thought that if I could keep my pace, of not playing too risky, I could finally break the 200K barrier which I got so close too last year. 

When I got the extra point and left the room, I knew something horrible happened, looking back at the video, you can tell that I knew something went wrong. The screen jumped and then the color on the bottom corner of the maze was wrong, and I knew something just went bad in the machine. 

I think I finally know how Bill Carlton felt in High Score when he was playing Missile Command, like Bill I knew before it happened that my game had just ended, it was heart wrenching. As of right now I still do not know what the cause of the kill screen was but my guess is I have a ram issue on the VFB-1000 video and control board. That is the only board in my machine that I haven't looked at or checked the ram chips in. Here is the video of when the game crashed on me!

 

I will continue playing, I know I can break 200K and if I can stop making stupid mistakes I think a score much high is possible! 

 

Getting back into the game I love so much

Well I took a massive break from playing Berzerk and Frenzy. Between moving into a new place, switching jobs, kids starting school, switching cars, life has just been non-stop busy for me.

 I finally got around to fixing my machine, and I have a Frenzy cabinet on the way to me. I will have both a Berzerk and a Frenzy arcade machines! So Last night I started with playing some fast bullets Berzerk. This is the one game out of the three I really struggle with, I tried playing two night ago but I wasn't in the right mindset to play the game.

My goal for the night was 20K, on my first game I got 24,590. What is even more impressive, or embarrassing depending on how you look at it, is I lost 3 men in the 8,000s and was still able to pull a 20K+ game.

After a couple of requests, I pulled the fast bullets EPROMs out and install my slow bullets EPROMs to play a game of slow bullets Berzerk. I hadn't played the game in months, I've been bouncing playing other titles but last night was the first serious game of Berzerk slow bullets I've played since before I moved. The game lasted over an hour and I got a score of 118,670. I'm really happy with that considering its been so long since I played the game.

My high score, which is now recognized by Twin Galaxies as a world record, is 199,860 points that I got on July 4, 2012. Since then I haven't played the game nearly as much I use to, and I'm getting back into playing the game nightly and I'm determined to be the first person in the world to play a perfect game of slow bullets Berzerk, which I will explain in a later post!

I must say it feels good to be back!

Berzerk Fast Bullets Training began last night!

Wow its been a long time since I update this blog! I've been very busy with other video games and my personal life in general that I haven't had much opportunity to play Berzerk! However I have now decided that I want to master Fast Bullets Berzerk. I would say I'm an expert in Slow Bullets, and getting to be a master in Slow Bullets, however I consider myself a novice when it comes to Fast Bullets. My current goal is to get to 30K points in Fast Bullets. I played for about 2 hours last night and was finally able to break 20K with a score of 21,050 points. My biggest challenge at the moment is the entrance and how to survive the opening 2 seconds of the maze, I have a feeling its just going to be practicing those entrances over and over again before I can become proficient at it. I will start updating this blog again on a weekly basis with my progress in learning Berzerk RC31 Fast Bullets!

Berzerk slow bullets tonight at 10pm eastern time!

Hey everyone! I will be playing some slow bullets Berzerk tonight starting at around 10pm eastern time on my twitch channel www.twitch.tv/disjaukifa! I hope to see you there!

I got 2,504,477 points in my Frenzy Marathon!

I set out to see what I could do in a Marathon of Frenzy and I found out it was about 21 hours. I lasted 20 hours and 39 minutes before I lost all my men. My final score was 2,504,477 points. I'm working on uploading all the footage now to youtube so I can post it here.

I can honestly say that was about the most grueling experience of my life. at one point I had extra men to the 5th row, and someone told me I had 126 extra men! I'm glad I went for the record and I'm proud of my score! I will post more about this attempt when I am more recovered!

Preparing to go after the World Record in Frenzy on Saturday!

First of all welcome to 2013! So I haven't been posting much recently and there has been a good reason. I have been practicing and training to go after the world record in Stern's Frenzy which was set by Joel West and is 5,308,468 points.

This will not be an easy task, quiet frankly it will be grueling. I played a practice session of Frenzy last night and I stopped right after 4 hours of game play at which point I was around 525,000 points, so I was on a sub 8 hour million pace which I was really happy with.

Also I set a new personal record last night. I got onto my third row of men for the first time ever. When I stopped the game I had 64 men. It took 10 minutes for the game to kill off all the men. I have a strategy I will be using that will hopefully make this world record attempt successful, I will be building men to about the 5th or 6th row and that will allow me to take a 5 minute break and still have plenty of men remaining.

My marathon attempt will start this Saturday at 6am eastern time on my twitch channel. I will be playing for over 48 hours hopefully so come by and say hi! I won't be going anywhere!

I've mastered Slow Bullets, time to learn Fast Bullets!

I have not updated this blog in a while because I haven't been playing Berzerk recently. I played so much Berzerk slow bullets and so much Frenzy, and with competing against Joel West at a Berzerk slow bullets competition at the Kong Off II in Denver, Colorado at the 1-UP Barcade, I was just spent.

Since I got Berzerk, my first arcade machine, its has been my most played machine and my favorite machine as well. I started playing fast bullets as that was the game that came in the machine. In two months of playing fast bullets, my best score was 15,050 points. In March Joel West found me a set of slow bullets EPROMs for my machine and I stopped playing fast bullets. I went on to get the 199,860 in slow bullets and then focused on Frenzy but I never got back to playing fast bullets and honestly that was huge mistake.

I have to thank Alan McNeil for creating such a wonderful game, if I ever get a chance to meet him in person I just want to thank him for making 3 absolutely wonder arcade games.

A couple of days ago I was called by my friend Marcus and was told he got 22,650 in Berzerk fast bullets which is a fantastic score, and much better than any fast bullets score I have ever gotten personally.

My high score at the time of that phone call was 18,520 I believe. I decided, with some suggestions on a joint webcast from Joel and Marcus that I wasn't able to put up that kind of score, I decided to prove them wrong, and told them I would stream that night starting at 8pm.

I believe my first 4 games were all in the 15K range. I then played two horrible games and then finally my game came. I started to really figure out how to attack the fast bullet robots. I achieved a score of 22,070 points! I didn't beat Marcus' score of 22,650, but I finally broke a long time achievement, I had gotten over 20K in fast bullets Berzerk, something I was beginning to think would never happen.

After the game I turned off the stream and I talked for about an hour with Joel West about the theory of playing fast bullets and also the excitement I felt for getting a new personal best. The last thing Joel told me before I got off the phone with him was that I should play one more game and that is what I did.

I had the game of my life in fast bullets Berzerk, even though my joystick locked up on me 3 times causing 3 of my deaths, I had the best game of fast bullets Berzerk ever. I achieved a score of 25,720! I broke my high score twice in one night and I can't remember the last time I had this much excitement about playing Berzerk.

I do feel bad, I don't feel I have pushed myself as hard as I should be in slow bullets, I really need to go back and analysis my game of 199,860 and see what I can do to push my score past 200K.

So as of right now I'm waiting on another joystick to come to replace the joystick I have in the machine. I will try to post more updates to this blog as I learn more about this wonder game called Berzerk!

I also want thank everyone that has read this blog of mine on my journey through learning and mastering Berzerk! I also want to thank all the wonderful friends I have made as well because of this game!

Joel West sets a new WR in Frenzy 5,308,468 points

Joel West, one of the people from Chasing Ghost that got me into arcade gaming, not only set a new record in Frenzy, but streamed one of the most intense games of Frenzy the world has ever watched. Joel was able to break is own world record with a score of 5,308,468 points after just over 48 hours of game play! Congratulations!

The went down hill around the 29 hour mark when the VFB-1000 board started to fail, yet he was still able to carry the game another 19 hours set a new world record! Simply amazing! Joel my friend congratulations!

The Quest for a Million points in Frenzy!

So I've decided to give myself a break from Slow Bullets Berzerk and switch what I'm going to be focusing on. Instead of focusing on Fast Bullets Berzerk, I've decided to focus on Frenzy instead! And what a journey already!

In the course of 3 nights I upped my high score from 30K, to 83K to over 300K! Its been a amazing couple of exciting nights of streaming Frenzy. I now can get to 100K easily, the biggest problem I run into now is time, I have to go to bed for work or I'm just too tired to stay awake to play a long game.

I'm hoping to break 500K tonight and maybe 1,000,000 points this weekend, its just figuring out a time that I will be able to do it!

Super Mega Angry Robot Destroyer Show!

Hey everyone! Its been a couple of weeks since I last posted here, my personal life has been really crazy. I just started a new job and I moved to another state hence my absence!

As you can see from the title of this post, I've changed the title of my broadcast on twitch.tv to "Super Mega Angry Robot Destroyer Show!" which was a name given to me by Zaz_cag! I love the name so I'm going to keep it!

I played a round of slow bullets last night and had a several people to show up and watch which was awesome! I ended up getting 102,770 points which now means I've broken 100,000 points in Berzerk RC28 Slow Bullets 5 times now.

The one thing I did notice last night watching my game-play was that the video was bouncing like crazy so I'm going to see if can fix that tonight so the video isn't bouncing nearly as much! Hopefully I'll play another round tonight!

RecordSetter and Twin Galaxies verified my 199,860 point game of Berzerk!

Well tonight was a great night for me! My 199,860 point game of Berzerk that I accomplished on July 4, 2012 this year has been verified by both RecordSetter and Twin Galaxies. Here is a screenshot I took of my score on Twin Galaxies Website:

And here is a screen shot from my record on RecordSetter:

Even though I have the #2 and #1 spots respectively on Twin Galaxies and Record Setter, I'm aiming to break that score, I want to break 200,000 points. That is my next goal for myself!

To pattern or not to pattern? That is the question!

OK cheesy title I know! Some of you might be wondering why I would even consider trying a pattern especially considering that my last post I got my best score ever in Berzerk.

Why is really the best question for me to answer. It's because I'm curious. I love Berzerk so I want to know everything about it and after trying my hand at it tonight I can say with certainty that I doubt I will EVER depend on a pattern to get a new high score in Berzerk.

I tried several pattern games tonight and I just couldn't stand it, it took all the fun out of the game for me, I didn't realize until tonight that the major enjoyment I get out of the game was from NOT knowing what was going to come next.

Now to anyone reading this, please don't think I'm slamming people that use a pattern to get scores in Berzerk, I'm not! Personally I believe they should be tracked differently, but that is another conversation for another time.

For myself, I just can't do it, it takes the fun out of the game for me, knowing what is going to be coming next. Give me free play/random play any day! I'll break 200,000 points soon! It's just a matter of time!

My 199,860 point game of Berzerk video!

I just set a new high score in Berzerk! 199,860!

Until today, the highest score in Berzerk RC28 slow bullets without using a pattern was 178,500 points set by Ron Bailey in 1982. I achieved a score of 199,860 points! 140 points away from 200,000 points!

I'm working on uploading the entire game footage now to youtube! I average 40,000 points a man, and that is almost exactly what I got on each mine, right at 40,000 points. I wanted to break 200,000 but I made a mistake and the 2 o'clock angle shot over a wall killed me, but still what a fantastic game!

The other great thing about this game was I almost doubled my previous high score of 110,930 points. When I got past 110,930 points, I was still on my 3rd man at that point! I'll post again once I have the video uploaded to youtube!

I meet another Berzerker!

Earlier this month I took some vacation from work, hence why I haven't been posting updates. While I was away on my vacation I got the opportunity to meet one of the best Berzerker's in the world, Joel West!

This a picture of me on the left and Joel on the right the day we meet at his home in North Carolina. Joel and I first chatted when he was streaming video of himself playing Berzerk on his twitch tv account, JoelWestGamer, back in February of this year. He was playing a couple of rounds of fast bullets Berzerk while chatting with the people in the chat room at the same time.

Since that first stream, I tried to watch and learn every time Joel streamed. Sometimes I was getting up very earlier in the morning to watch him play for just 40 minutes, but I never wanted to miss an opportunity to learn something about the game I love from someone who has been playing it for 30 years.

Though I am now focused on the first version of the game, RC28 slow bullets, at that time I was still playing fast bullets Berzerk.  I was able to significantly increase my RC31 fast bullets score from watching Joel play. After watching him stream one time, I was able to increase my personal best score in fast bullets from 11,540 points to 12,480 points, almost a 1,000 point increase. After watching a couple more streams, I was able to get a score 15,050 a few weeks later. Though none of these scores are "amazing", I was learning and improving, but more importantly I was having fun!

It was shortly after that I got a set of RC28 slow bullets and shifted my focus away from fast bullets Berzerk. Slow bullets and fast bullets Berzerk are completely different, however several strategies and techniques to clear a room remain the same, so I continued to watch and learn from Joel.

As some of you might have noticed, in every single game of Berzerk I play now, if I break 43,000 points I make a comment about playing a "respectable game of Berzerk". This comes from Joel West. I was watching him stream one night, and during his game he asked if I broken my high score in slow bullets, which at the time was 42,880 points. I said no in the chat window. About 10 ~ 15 minutes later Joel broke 30,000 in his game of fast bullets Berzerk, an achievement in and of itself, when he said the following "I alway feel I have played a respectable game of Berzerk when I break 30,000 points. For slow bullets, a respectable game is 43,000 points"

Joel did not say this with malice but to motivate me which he said about a minute later on his stream. Though it was funny on the stream, Joel was at that moment living one of his favorite sayings "Iron sharpens iron!' I needed that push, I had been stuck at the 42,880 for about a week at that point and I think it was a day or two later I got 51,540 points in Berzerk.

Since that game Joel and I have been pushing each other to keep playing better at our versions of Berzerk, RC 28 slow bullets for me and RC31 fast bullets for Joel. Whenever we watch each other stream, we even comment on weither or not we've played "respectable" games of Berzerk that night.

Back to my visit with Joel, oddly enough when I went to meet and visit with Joel, his machine was set to play Frenzy. Joel was playing on my Frenzy PCB actually which I had lent him a couple of weeks earlier when he couldn't get his Frenzy board working correctly. Why you might ask? Because playing Frenzy will drastically improve you Berzerk skills, regardless if its slow bullets or fast bullets. In Frenzy  you have to focus on some many more things going on around you that the game forces you to learn to observe your surrounds even more than you do in Berzerk.

 I think we played a couple of rounds, never a 2 player game, Joel was just showing me all kinds of things he had learned about Frenzy over the years. The most impressive thing I saw Joel do while I was there was play Frenzy one handed and he still played way better than I am able too! During my short visit, we shared things we have learned about Berzerk and Frenzy. It was great being able to collaborate with another Berzerker who knew so much about game, and to share with Joel somethings about the game he hadn't seen or knew before.

Joel is great gamer, but more importantly a good friend that continues to push my gameplay in Berzerk. I look forward to learning and competing with Joel in the future. Maybe sometime later this year Joel and I will be able to play a 2 player game of slow bullets Berzerk on the same machine on a live stream. I'll do fast bullets and Frenzy at some point . . . once it would be a fair competition! Trust me when I say this, even with Joel only playing with one hand, regardless if its Joel's dominate playing hand or not, he he still out of league in those RC31 fast bullets and Frenzy! In Slow Bullets, I think I have a chance!