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!
