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frenzy: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Frenzy (c) 05/1982 Stern.

A sequel to the 1980 game, "Berzerk", Frenzy once again has the player battling through a maze of rooms, populated by robotic skeletons, robotic octopi and walls. Everything in each room, except walls is deadly to the touch.

The object is to shoot all the robots, and then escape out of the room through one of the doorways. Like its prequel, Frenzy consist of 64,000 levels. Once all 64,000 have been cleared the game will crash.

- TECHNICAL -

The Frenzy cabinet had a patented pull out drawer that allowed access to the games circuit boards from the front of the cabinet. Frenzy machines are bright orange, and are not as cool looking as "Berzerk" machines were. The graphics are mostly done in blue, yellow, and orange, and are just simple designs for the most part.

This is technically a monochrome game. It uses a special 'color overlay' circuit board to add color to the games graphics before they go to the monitor. A side effect of this is that walking very close to a wall, robot, laser blast, etc, will cause part of that object to change to your color.

Main CPU : Z80 (@ 2.5 Mhz)

Sound Chips : Custom tone generator, custom LPC speech synthesis chip

Screen orientation : Horizontal

Video resolution : 256 x 224 pixels

Screen refresh : 60.00 Hz

Palette colors : 16

Players : 2

Control : 8-way joystick

Buttons : 1

- TRIVIA -

Frenzy speaks to you as you play. It has a voice synthesizer that spouts little phrases. These were done in a monotone computer voice, which was difficult to understand when combined with other in-game sounds (The voices were actually done using LPC encoding, which cost $1000 per word back in 1980). These phrases were also translated into several European languages (Spanish, French, and German) for release in Europe.

In Frenzy, however, the robots are nowhere near as chatty. They only speak in a few specific situations. See "Differences from Berzerk" below for full details.

Mark Smith holds the official record for this game with 4,804,540 points.

DIFFERENCES FROM BERZERK...

* In Berzerk, the walls are all solid. In Frenzy, some of the walls of the maze are composed of 'dots' which can be shot. This opens up strategies such as blasting a hole in the side of a room to escape when in trouble. The solid walls, on the other hand, now reflect shots. You can trick robots into killing themselves by standing on the opposite side of a reflective wall and letting them shoot themselves. The only wall that simply absorbs shots harmlessly as in the original is the closed door that appears behind you when you enter a new room.

* Neither type of wall is electrified, and so you can touch them without dying. On the other hand, you also usually can't kill robots by tricking them into walking into the now-harmless walls. In addition, you can no longer die by touching the robots or their explosions. Only their shots can kill you (though the blast radius from an exploding robot can kill you). There are two types of robots: skeletons and tanks. The two types have identical AI, but the skeletons are more difficult to shoot from above or below (because they're so thin).

* In Berzerk, Evil Otto was unkillable and unstoppable. In Frenzy, where he's known as Crazy Otto, shooting him once changes him from a smiley face to a 'neutral' face, and another shot converts him to a 'frowny' face. Another shot kills him. However, killing Crazy Otto makes him a little bit faster the next time he appears, which is usually immediately.

* Every four mazes, there are seemingly decorative elements in Frenzy that don't exist in the earlier game. For example, in one room is a huge statue of Otto called Big Otto. Each one has a specific effect on game-play for that one room. The order is : Big Otto, Power Plant, Central Computer, and Robot Factory. The Power Plant and the Central Computer are surrounded by walls made entirely of 'dots', while Big Otto and the Robot Factory are surrounded by reflective walls with only one breakable 'dot' in the corner, making them more difficult to hit.

* In the Power Plant room, shooting the power plant once will disable it, and all robots in the room will stop moving. In the Central Computer room, shooting the computer will cause all the robots to start moving and firing erratically. While they're in such a state, the walls can kill them. The Robot Factory will continue to spit out additional robots while you're in the stage, taunting you as it does so. Shooting the factory has no effect.

* In the Big Otto room, if you kill Crazy Otto, not only does he immediately respawn as usual, but Big Otto sends four more Ottos at you, all moving at top speed. Like the Robot Factory, shooting Big Otto has no effect. Big Otto starts out with closed eyes and a neutral expression, but his expression changes to one of rage, with glowing red eyes and a frowning mouth, when you kill Crazy Otto. He also smiles when you die, though his eyes remain the same as before, either closed or open.

* Finally, the robots are nowhere near as chatty. They only speak in a few specific situations. They say 'Robot, attack!' when Crazy Otto appears, 'Charge...attack...shoot...kill...destroy!' when you kill Crazy Otto and he respawns, 'The Humanoid must not destroy the robot!' when entering the Big Otto room, 'Where is the Humanoid?' when shooting the Central Computer, and randomly alternates between 'A robot must get the humanoid' and 'A robot is not a chicken' when the Robot Factory dispenses a new robot. The constant background chatter of the original game is gone.

- SCORING -

Robots Killed (by you, another robot, or Crazy Otto) : 50 points.

Wall Dots Shot (by you or a robot) : 1 point.

Crazy Otto : 20 points per hit.

Bonus For Killing All Robots : 10 points per robot killed.

- SERIES -

1. Berzerk (1980)

2. Frenzy (1982)

- STAFF -

Designed & programmed by : Alan McNeil

- PORTS -

* Consoles :

Colecovision (1982)

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture (bossyman15)

MAME Info:

0.30 [Brad Oliver, Keith Gerdes, Mirko Buffoni, Mike Cuddy]

Artwork available

WIP:

- 0.137u1: Lord Nightmare re-added the color test mode to Frenzy. Added 'Hardware Tests' dipswitch.

- 0.129u4: Changed Custom sound to Exidy SFX.

- 27th December 2008: Mr. Do - Jeff Rothe sent me a photo of the instructions for the Frenzy bezel. This has finally been added.

- 0.125u9: Update S14001A core [Lord Nightmare]: Improved filtering to be more accurate to the chip, changed internal audio renderer to produce 4 bit sound as the real chip does. Moved filter outside of the main rendering loop into the glue code. Note: With this update, you may hear a whining noise that was not previously present. This is accurate to the chip! The real chip would almost always have an analog filter placed on its output to suppress this whine.

- 0.122u7: Zsolt Vasvari changed S14001A emulator to allow setting the clock frequency instead of the clock multiplier. This is how the real chip works. Changed the Berzerk driver to set the S14001A clock as per the schematics.

- 0.117u3: Added correct prom ($0 - address decoder/rom select) to Frenzy.

- 0.115u3: Significant changes to the Berzerk driver [Zsolt Vasvari]: Video timings, memory map and interrupt system implemented from schematics. Hooked up colors according to the schematics as well. The colors changed significantly. For example the yellow robots are now more like a mustard color. Changed VSync to 59.637405 Hz.

- 0.113: Added prom ($0 - address decoder/rom select)- copy of Moon War (prototype).

- 0.112: Proper implementation of noise generator in the Exidy/Berzerk sound circuit and fixed popping in Berzerk speech [Lord Nightmare].

- 0.111u6: Lord Nightmare added the missing volume and frequency controls to the Berzerk driver and s14001a core. Fixed the issue with random words being spoken instead of the proper ones. Word is now latched at the proper time. Changed S14001A clock speed to 5MHz.

- 0.111u5: Lord Nightmare fixed a minor problem with sound clipping in the s14001a. Aaron Giles added sound effects emulation to the Berzerk driver. Added Custom sound and removed samples (01-23.wav).

- 0.111u4: Lord Nightmare, Kevtris and R. Belmont added preliminary emulation of the TSI S14001A speech synthesizer as found in Berzerk/Frenzy (and also Stern pinballs). Added S14001A sound.

- 7th January 2007: Mr. Do - Thanks to the loan by Vintage Arcade Superstore and vectorization by Zorg, we have Frenzy (and yes, Berzerk is in the cue, once the computer is up and running full speed).

- 0.103u1: Major cleanup/rewrite of the Berzerk driver [smf]: Merged memory & IO read/write maps. Video ram & magic ram share the same memory. Hooked up NVRAM in frenzy memory map. Emulates magic ram shifter/flopper with 9 74LS153's as per the schematics. Emulates magic ram ALU with 2 74LS181's hardwired to logic mode as per the schematics. 74LS181 emulation based on the logic diagram from the datasheet, supporting logic mode & arithmetic mode.

- 0.101u1: MASH added the missing voice roms to Berzerk and Frenzy.

- 0.93: Removed Custom sound.

- 15th May 2002: Zsolt Vasvari cleaned up the Berzerk driver.

- 0.36b7: Added Custom sound.

- 14th March 1999: Zsolt Vasvari has fixed Frenzy coin inputs.

- 0.35b6: Added 3rd coin slot.

- 0.35b5: Changed visible area to 256x224. Removed clone 'Frenzy (version 1)'.

- 0.34b8: Dave W. added high score saving to Frenzy.

- 0.33b2: Zsolt Vasvari fixed speed in Berzerk and Frenzy.

- 0.30: Brad Oliver, Keith Gerdes, Mirko Buffoni and Mike Cuddy added Frenzy (Stern 1981) and clone (version 1).

- 24th October 1997: Dumped Frenzy.

Other Emulators:

* Retrocade

Recommended Games (Maze 2):

Berzerk

Frenzy

Wizard of Wor

Draco

Venture

Warp & Warp

Black Widow

Demon

Kram

Naughty Boy

QB-3

Robotron

Tazz-Mania

Wacko

Gridlee

Mazer Blazer

Screw Loose

Inferno (Williams)

Wiz Warz

Alien Arena

Butasan

Smash T.V.

Dynablaster / Bomber Man

Bomber Man World

Neo Bomberman

Exvania

Nitro Ball

Ultraman Club

Last Fighting

BnB Arcade

Recommended Games (Robots):

Robot Bowl

Berzerk

Frenzy

Robotron

Hopper Robo

I, Robot

Marvin's Maze

Screw Loose

Hole Land

Bygone

Galactic Warriors

Metal Clash

Metal Soldier Isaac II

Robo Wres 2001

Mutant Night

Star Guards

Xybots

Atomic Robo-kid

Bakutotsu Kijuutei

Enforce

Povar / Sobrat' Buran / Agroprom (Pssst)

Robocop

Robocop 2

Robocop 3 (Nintendo Super System)

Act-Fancer Cybernetick Hyper Weapon

Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters

Robo Army

Terminator 2 - Judgment Day

Turbo Force

Battle of the Solar System

X-Men

Schmeiser Robo

Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness

Romset: 25 kb / 8 files / 16.2 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Frenzy</description>

<manufacturer>Stern Electronics</manufacturer>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</configuration>

</game>

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