Friday, October 11, 2013

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! 

 

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