Crisis time! The Great British Galactic Diplomacy Corp has a hostage situation.
Despite concerted diplomatic efforts, the "Junkix" have invaded the municipal world of "Muneris".
Once again, Charles "Charlie" Chatsworth must exercise his legendary displomatic and persausive powers and save the trapped office workers from the misguided cyber-terrorists, the Junkix!
Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!
Contents
Authors Commentary
Authors Commentary
October 2009 (Concept)
So, for those readers with at least 1 score and ten years to spare in their age. You may well recognize something in the title of this game. In the last century, back in the early 1980's a game hit the coin-op arcades called "Berzerk!". It was soon followed by a game called "Frenzy!". For me, "Berzerk!" was the most memorable. Certainly not for the graphics (or pace for that matter), but for the robot (Cylon-esque) style voice. The game used to taunt the player and appeared to laugh if you lost your life (I often wondered if the robots were saying "ha ha humanoid, ha ha intruder", or "Got the humanoid, Got the intruder!". I always hoped it was the former.
Well, "Berzerk!" is the game that will serve as the inspiration for "Charlie Goes Berzerk!". Much like my previous games "Tail Gun Charlie (marketplace)" and "Rail Gun Charlie" (marketplace), this game will be a full 3D first and third person interpretation of the original 2D classic. In my version, Charlie will be on a hostage rescue mission (perhaps rescuing avatars on the XBox360 version).
So, here is a video of the original "Berzerk!" game to give you some idea of what the original was like (along with that great - for the time - robot voice!).
I've decided to incorporate some key game play mechanics in to this game. When you look at Berzerk as a game, whilst there is the perception you are in a maze of rooms, this isn't that case and the rooms just go on and on forever. So, a core mechanic will be a solvable maze. In fact, I think this offers me a great means to increase the volume of task with each successive level of the game. The maze will get bigger and so making the search for the hostages increasingly difficult. The office will not just be a maze of corridors though. Another one of my favourite arcade titles (that shows a linage straight back to Berzerk) is SmashTV (Twin stick shooters go back a long way!). Here is a video I found (No, It's not me in the video) showing the arcade game in action. The key thing is the open room spaces. My maze will have open areas so that some real carnage can happen with "In" and "End of" level bosses! Williams really did rock back in the eighties when it came to full on 2D shooters!
One of the key mechanics you see is the bonus collection and power-ups. I dabbled with Power-Ups in my game Tail Gun Charlie (In fact, if you don't collect the power-ups, the game is incredibly difficult). I'm going to have power-ups in this new game with (I hope) a multitude of different weapons and carnage aids! So, in summary:
- Ever growing maze structure to levels
- Open spaces for bonus style boss and alien horde style battles
- Power-ups to help the player rescue the hostages
...I had better get coding :)