Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
A taunt from a machine that cannot be reasoned with, delivered in a flat synthetic voice that made it funnier and creepier in an arcade. The insult only works because the robot is right: you ran. It became a standard sample of what 1980s speech sounded like, and fans still use it as a cheerful put-down for anyone who leaves the fight early.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for BerzerkShow the scene
Berzerk (Stern, arcade, 1980) puts a lone Humanoid Intruder in a maze of rooms patrolled by laser-firing robots, and it is among the first games to use speech synthesis. Programmer Alan McNeil took up a salesman's speech chip and kept the phrases short, using them to taunt the player. If you leave a room without destroying every robot, the survivors taunt you with a line fans remember as "Chicken! Fight like a robot!". The smiley menace Evil Otto, the unkillable face that hunts you when you linger, is the other half of the game's personality.
Sources (2)
- Wikipedia: Berzerk (video game)DevelopmentReference checked
- StrategyWiki: BerzerkOverviewReference checked
Context reviewed