Previously: The Mannequin Human.
Type: EV (Electronic Virus).
Period/location of origin: 1980, Chicago area, Illinois. Subject’s primary home base was Friar Tuck’s Game Room, an arcade located in Calumet City, Cook County, Illinois.
Appearance: Subject appears to be a coin-operated video game cabinet of the type popular in American game arcades circa 1970s-1980s. The game housed within the cabinet is Berzerk; the cabinet is also allegedly cursed — hence, subject’s identifying moniker: The cursed Berzerk video game arcade cabinet.
The Berzerk cabinet, upon its initial release, consisted of a black body, an orange and yellow marquee denoting the game’s title, triangular designs rendered in blue and red on the sides, and comic book-style images framing the screen. Controls consisted — as was common for the time — of a single joystick and several buttons.
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The game itself is a multidirectional shooter in which the player character attempts to navigate a randomly-generated maze patrolled by evil robots.
The cabinet and the game were also both notable for a pair of unique characteristics not commonly found in either at the time: The cabinet featured a pull-out drawer at the front that allowed easy access to all of the game’s logic boards for relatively fuss-free maintenance and servicing; and the game was one of the first video games in history to utilize speech synthesis.
There does not appear to be more than one cursed Berzerk video game arcade cabinet — that is, it is not the game itself that is allegedly cursed, or all cabinets of the Berzerk game. Subject is, specifically, this particular Berzerk cabinet. It is, so far as anyone knows, one of a kind.
Modus operandi: In short: Subject is, allegedly, a killer video game cabinet.
A precise MO is difficult to pin down, due to the extremely limited nature of the dataset, but when subject is discussed, it is typically said that those who play subject have a habit of expiring immediately afterwards. The cause is usually — although not always — cited as myocardial infarction, colloquially known as a heart attack. Please see Additional Notes for further details.
Containment: The easiest way to contain possible mayhem unleashed by subject is simply by… not playing subject. However, this containment method is easier said than done: The arcade at which subject was previously found closed several decades ago, and subject’s current whereabouts remain unknown.
Additional notes: Berzerk was originally released in 1980 by the Chicago area arcade game company Stern Electronics. Designed by Alan McNeil, who took inspiration from a sci fi-esque nightmare he once had, its gameplay saw players taking control of a small, green, human-shaped sprite armed with a laser and attempting to escape from a maze while pursued by a series of similarly-laser-armed robots. Coming into contact with a robot, touching the walls of the maze, or being zapped by one of the robots’ lasers resulted in an immediate game over. And, just for flavor, a sentient smiley face known as Evil Otto would periodically appear; Evil Otto, too, would pursue the player character, who, if caught, would again receive an immediate game over.
The specific Berzerk cabinet that concerns this report was housed at the medieval-themed arcade Friar Tuck’s Game Room, formerly located at 674 River Oaks Drive, Calumet City, Illinois, within the Sherwood Forest Plaza shopping area.
Friar Tuck’s originally opened in February of 1982, a project of then-realty professional Tom Blankley, who, Blankley told NWI Times in 2003, started the arcade up solely to “get [the shopping plaza] started”; Blankley had recently sold the property on which the plaza was located. However, said Blankley, he soon found that running an arcade “took a lot more hands-on attention than [he had] expected,” and it soon became a full business, which Blankley ran with his wife, Mary Jo Blankley, from 1982 to 2003.
Several deaths have been allegedly associated with Friar Tuck’s Berzerk cabinet, although of the three primarily pointed to, only one truly — and accurately — reflects subject’s reputation as a “cursed” cabinet.
The first death, chronologically, allegedly occurred in 1981. A 19-year-old — one Jeff Dailey — is said to have played subject, achieved a high score of 16,660, and then, still standing before the cabinet, suffered an incidence of myocardial infarction and immediately expired.
However, current opinion is that this particular alleged death is, in fact, a fabrication, due to a lack of supporting evidence of its veracity. Indeed, it is believed that the alleged Jeff Dailey account did not arise until six months after the second death that occurred; it was simply post-dated to position it first in the chronology. Additionally, it is worth noting that the Dailey account is not typically pinned to a specific location — notable, given that Friar Tuck’s did not open until 1982, that is, the year after the Dailey incident allegedly occurred.
Meanwhile, this “second” death — in actuality the first one — is verifiable as fact.
On April 3, 1982 — a Saturday — 18-year-old Peter Bukowski of South Holland, Illinois entered Friar Tuck’s Game Room with a friend at around 8:30pm, approached subject, played Berzerk for about 15 minutes, during which time he scored within the top ten for the machine at least twice, and then moved on to another cabinet just a few steps away. Moments after disposing a quarter into the second cabinet, he collapsed.
The Chicago Tribune reported on April 27, 1982 that the coroner had ruled the death a heart attack, likely resulting from a pre-existing condition neither Bukowski or his family had known he had. Scarring had been found around the teen’s heart that was indicative of a congenital condition that had previously gone undetected. No determination was made about whether the stress of playing the game had caused the heart attack, although Deputy Lake County Coroner Mark Allen told the paper that the possibility was being investigated.
(Note: In discussion of this event, the teen’s name appears variously in print as both “Bukowski” and “Burkowski.” Contemporaneous news coverage of the incident, such as that published by the Chicago Tribune and the Rockford Register Star, render it as “Bukowski”; as such, that is the spelling this report has chosen to use.)
The similarities between this actual event and the alleged Jeff Dailey story have led many to believe that the Dailey story was manufactured in the months following the reports on Bukowski’s death. Numerous researchers have located no evidence supporting the Dailey story’s veracity; there is no news coverage, for example, and the only 19-year-old Jeffrey Dailey known to have died in the United States in 1981 was from Virginia, with the cause of death being a vehicular collision. Dailey was interred at Holly Lawn Cemetery in Suffolk, Virginia.
“Dailey” is sometimes even said to have been friends with Bukowski, but it has been observed that, if that were the case, this detail almost certainly would have made it into the reports and news coverage of Bukowski’s death.
The final death frequently associated with subject is also verifiable as fact, although its circumstances are rather different. In March of 1988, 17-year-old Edward Clark Jr. suffered a knife wound following an altercation with another teenager at Friar Tuck’s Game Room, according to a March 22 report from the Chicago Tribune. Clark was taken to a clinic in Munster, Indiana — just over the state line, a mere four and a half miles away from Friar Tuck’s in Illinois — although he sadly did not survive the encounter.
No mention of specific games or arcade cabinets are mentioned in contemporaneous news coverage of the altercation, although it is sometimes said that the fight broke out over a commonly-used method of casually “reserving” a cabinet for play: Lining up your quarters on a cabinet held your place in line to play; arcade etiquette dictated that, when the current player ran out, whoever’s quarter was next in line had the next game.
Some sources have speculated that the events leading up to Clark’s death involved one teen leaving their quarters on a machine to claim the next game, only to have another teen steal one of those quarters and use it himself. The cabinet? Berzerk, of course — Friar Tuck’s Berzerk.
However, it is likely that this detail has been fabricated. There is no hard evidence to suggest that it actually occurred; nor is there any mention of the Berzerk cabinet in the news coverage of the incident.
Here, it may behoove us to address the vagueness surrounding subject’s alleged modus operandi. Insofar as it has one, many assume that it is that which was seen in the story of Peter Bukowski’s death: That playing this particular Berzerk cabinet may induce a heart attack in targets, causing them to expiring instantly. But, it is not possible to rule this MO as a certainty, as the Jeff Dailey story is likely fictional, and the Clark story unrelated (or merely tied into subject coincidentally, due to time and location).
Friar Tuck’s Game Room closed in 2003 due to Tom Blankley’s worsening health; he was 60 at the time of its closure. As of this writing, there is an event planning company occupying the arcade’s former address.
Similarities may also be noted between this current subject and previous Encylopaedia subject Polybius. The Polybius cabinet’s MO is slightly different from that of this particular Berzerk cabinet; and yet, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the two cabinets may be in some way related, or connected to each other. After all: How many killer video game cabinets can there really be?
Berzerk was ported to the both Atari 2600 and Atari 5200, as well as to the lesser-known Vectrex, for home release, and remained available to play during those systems’ lifetimes. Atari also acquired the rights to a dozen Stern Electronics properties, including both Berzerk and its 1982 sequel, Frenzy, in March of 2023. Per the press release, Atari “[seeks] to expand digital and physical distribution of the classic titles, create new games based on the IP, and explore brand and merchandising collaborations.”
An in-browser version of the Atari 2600 port is also available at the website Free80sArcade.com, although whether that will continue to be the case as Atari attempts to revamp the IP remains to be seen.
Regardless, it remains a popular title among retro gaming enthusiasts.
Recommendation: Berzerk may be safely played in any form… as long as it is not the specific cabinet that once lived at Friar Tuck’s Game Room in Calumet City.
The trouble is, should you locate a cabinet in the wild — there is no way to know whether it is that particular cabinet or not.
Should you find one…
Well, we’ve got a saying for that here: Play at your own risk.
Resources:
Berzerk at Museum Of The Game.
“The Making Of Berzerk” at Retro Gamer.
“Dying To Play: The Berzerk Curse – Fact Or Fiction?” by Cat DeSpira (originally published at Twin Galaxies).
“How Many People Has The Berzerk Arcade Game Killed” at Retrovolve.
“Heart Is Blamed In Death Of Video Game Patron, 18” in the Chicago Tribune (April 23, 1982).
“Death Of A Video Gamer” in Video Games Magazine (Oct. 1982; transcript available here).
“Youth Charged In Stabbing Death” in the Chicago Tribune (March 22, 1988).
“Game Over: Popular Calumet City Arcade Closing After 21 Years” in the NWI Times (May 7, 2003).
Cursed Objects: Strange But True Stories of the World’s Most Infamous Items by J. W. Ocker.
“Video Game Related Deaths” at the Golden Age Arcade Historian.
Berzerk at Free80sArcade.com.
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[Photo via mdherren/Pixabay]
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