Just found out that Alan McNeil Passed away...

[PacManPlus]

 

He was very helpful when I was porting Frenzy / Berzerk to the 7800. Super nice guy.

RIP Alan.

 

(For anyone who doesn't know, he was the programmer of the arcade version of Berzerk and Frenzy)

[DracIsBack]

RIP Alan. :-(

[Albert]

Damn, that sucks.

 

I spent a ton of time playing Berzerk in arcades when I was younger. Frenzy was less common, so don't think I saw one of those until much later.

 

..Al

[+save2600]

Love those games and have owned a few Berzerk machines throughout the years. Countless hours spent enjoying the arcade, 2600 version and now on the 7800. May you RIP Alan!

[BassGuitari]

[+sramirez2008]

The game had me at “Coin detected in pocket”. Spent many a quarter on Berzerk. Loved the gameplay, sounds and of course the speech.

 

RIP Alan.

[NostAlgae37]

Sad to hear that so many greats of our generation who influenced our formative years are passing away. The last year has definitely been a difficult one.

[Airshack]

We salute you Alan. Video game pioneer. Celebrate his legacy on your TI-99/4A:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcgLZU3_8HQ&feature=youtu.be

[jaybird3rd]

RIP, and thanks for many cathartic hours of robot blasting. I still enjoy Berzerk in its various forms today.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N73WzJX8LFo

[+Cafeman]

RIP. Loved Berzerk.

[Inky]

I could have sworn I read this thread before.

Alan sadly passed away in 2017

[jaybird3rd]

I could have sworn I read this thread before.

 

Alan sadly passed away in 2017

It was noted in this earlier thread, but I don't think many people saw it. I found out in that thread that McNeil was on AtariAge for a short time; here is his only post.

[maxdrive]

RIP it is still one of the few arcade games to be ported to the vectrex

[MegaManFan]

Even if it's old news, it's still sad news all the same. I'm not super spiritual, so I won't make falsely unverifiable statements about things I don't know or understand -- I'll just say that I hope family and friends were with him when he passed and that he passed at peace.

[MrMaddog]

Sorry to hear that... I have a saved text file from an old newsgroup that describes the making of Berserk, so I guess this would be a good tribute.

 

 

BERZERK INFORMATION


From: xtarelex@powergrid.electriciti.com
Newsgroups: alt.games.video.classic
Subject: Re: Arcade Berzerk
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 16:58:48
Organization: ElectriCiti
Lines: 87
Message-ID:



Following the Berzerk thread got me to remeniscing, in case anyone is
interested.

Lee K. Seitz (lkseitz@seitz.b11.ingr.com) remembers the phrases better than
I do. I can't think of any he may have missed. The speech was done using
LPC coding that I believe was invented by T.I., although I remember we
used a National Speech chip in it. This was when speech and memory was
expensive, so we didn't just digitize sounds and dump them out through a
DAC. I remember it cost something like $1000 per word to have the
compression done, so we tried to come up with a limited vocabulary which
could be rearranged and reused as much as possible. There was some guy
up in Silicon Gulch who did this stuff for a living - so it is possible to
make money while talking in a monotone.

The original hardware design used a 6809 CPU, until we found out that
the externally clocked version (6809E) didn't work properly. We had to
hustle to redo the board to run a Z80. The local Mot rep said he was
going to have the 6809E's designer shot for that, but I don't think that
ever really happened.

Stern's management (in their infinite wisdom) did not foresee that color
video games would take off, so we were 'directed' to develop a monochrome
hardware system. Then suddenly Defender happened from Williams and we had
to hustle again. What we did was to come up with a color overlay board which
would map the screen into 4 x 4 or 8 x 8 (I don't remember anymore) pixel
blocks. If the monochrome frame buffer output was a '1', the color in the
overlay RAM was used. Otherwise it was black. This is why when the rooms
move the walls change color. We called this board the BSC (Bullsh*t color),
but the real name was Buffer System, Color.

The frame buffer used refresh spec fallout 4K x 1 DRAMs. These were cheap
and easy to get at the time because all the manufacturers had problems meeting
the refresh specs. Since we read out data during all lines, refresh was no
problem. This idea was originated on the original Midway monochrome 8080
based games - Gunfight, Seawolf, etc.

There was no object to the game other than to survive and kill as many robots
as possible. As the game progressed, the rooms got more intricate and more
any more robots showed up. You had to kill all the robots before the exit
doors would open. Evil Otto came out faster as the game progressed.

The game was named after the Sci-Fi novel 'Berzerkers' by I believe Fred
Saberhagen. It's a novel about robots which go Berzerk and kill everybody.
I remember we came up with the name while caught in a traffic jam on Chicago's
Kennedy expressway.

Evil Otto was invented to convince you to leave the room after you killed
all the robots. Otherwise, people would have a tendency to hang around. We
wanted to kill you off ASAP so as to get the replay. By the way, Evil Otto
was named after a guy by the name of Dave Otto, who worked for the company
all of us worked for before joining Stern/URL. This company did R&D for
Midway, and was respnsible for the first Midway processor-based games. We also
worked on the aborted Bally Professional Arcade, one of the first home vid syst
ems.
Otto was the co-owner's gopher. We used to call him the sherrif, since he
was an ex rent-a-cop and was responsible for security, toilet paper, coffee,
etc.

Berzerk was the most popular American-designed video game done by Stern. I
think we built somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000. We would have built more
but we had serious problems with the original joystick - which used opto-
reflector devices. The joystick was designed to pass the baseball bat test -
smack it with a baseball bat and if it survived we figured that it would last
on location - how wrong we were. What happened was that the rubber piece that
formed a liquid seal (barf, beer, etc) was gorund down by the action of the
joystick rubbing against the mounting plates, and the rubber glop coated the
reflective surface. Another problem was that the surface did not reflect
directly into to optics, it went off at an angle, so the phototransistor
didn't see all the light. It was eventually replaced by a Wico joystick.
The numbers built were short of what Williams did with Defender which was
out at the same time. Defender was definitely a better game.

Frenzy happened because we had some board inventory left over. We were
running Astro-invaders (a ripoff of Invaders which we lisenced from a little
known Japanese company - Konami) and it used a different hardware system.
As I recall, the object was to nuke the nuclear reactor - then all the
robots would go nuts and just walk around instead of going after you -
for a while.

That's all I can remember for now, if anyone is interested I'll talk to some
of the guys who were around at the time (some of us still keep in touch) and
see if there are any other things which might be of interest.

[NostAlgae37]

Berserk was one of my favorite 2600 games as a youngster, so those reflections/reminiscences about the arcade version were awesome to read. Thanks so much for posting that, it really made my evening.

[TrekMD]

May he rest in peace. He gave us two amazing games for which we will remember him a long time!

[SlidellMan]

Rest in Piece, Mr. McNeil. Berserk was really fun.

[Inky]

One thing I adore about the Antic podcast are the sheer number of interviews (or as the probably better call them "oral histories") with people that have worked in some way with the Atari 8-bit (and some times other platforms.) It's important to get these stories out there from the mouths of the creators so that the golden era never truly passes away.

Someone should start something similar with Arcade game creators. I may try to transition Pie Factory that way.

Edited April 5, 2019 by Inky

[jaybird3rd]

One thing I adore about the Antic podcast are the sheer number of interviews (or as the probably better call them "oral histories") with people that have worked in some way with the Atari 8-bit (and some times other platforms.) It's important to get these stories out there from the mouths of the creators so that the golden era never truly passes away.

I agree. They've done an amazing job compiling these interviews. I've only had time to listen to some of them, but the amount of material there is extraordinary. (I'm also a Patreon backer.)

[Baby Blue Azure]

Hey Guys,

 

I didn't know him personally, but sad to hear this. He was 66. Quickly approaching age 40 (hex) myself that's too close to home for me. Way back, rarely did the programmers receive the rightful amount for their tremendous achievements. He landed in Montana which is a blast of a place to be if you like wide open roads with high speed limits and Big Sky. Maybe not so enjoyable in the winters. Highly recommend Yellowstone NP which is nearby, but be sure to avoid the summer crowds there. May and September works.

 

This is Alan's obit:

https://www.buffalohillfh.com/notices/Alan-McNeil

[Lord Thag]

Sad to hear. Berzerk is one of my favorites, I play the Atari 8-bit conversion and the 7800 ones constantly. Think maybe I'll play a few rounds this evening as a tip of the hat, so to speak.

[Randall Flagg]

I’m so shocked to hear this. He was a really nice guy.

i had a good email conversation with him when I was working on a PC Berzerk port. Retro Gamer magazine had jus done an article on Berzerk and had interviewed Alan for the piece with no payment and hadn’t even bothered to send him a copy of the issue! I felt bad so I sent him my copy as a thanks for the info he provided and he invited me to go and stay with him if I was ever in his neck of the woods. A really top bloke.

 

https://www.buffalohillfh.com/notices/Alan-McNeil

Edited September 16, 2019 by Randall Flagg

[pmpddytim]

Sad to hear.

 

I'm going to fire up the Berzerk cabinet and play a few games. 

 

Edited September 16, 2019 by pmpddytim