I had a dream, envisioning the game "Frenzy" before I had actually seen it in real life. I had dreamt of a game like Berzerk, except that instead of robots, there were skeletons, and the name of the game was "Frenzy".

Later that month, mother took me with her to some appointment of hers or other, and I headed straight for the ice cream shop to while away the time.

The shop had just gotten a new game. I saw the title on the front placard: "Frenzy". I thought, "Wow, weird!"

Then I approached the machine, glanced at the screen, and when I saw a game just like Berzerk, but with skeletons, well... well, I thought "Wow, weird!" But I mean, really, that's quite something.

My father, of course, insisted that I must have seen it elsewhere, somewhat peripherally perhaps, and had subconsciously registered it at that point.

But I prefer my theory:

FRENZY WAS THE FIRST, LAST, AND ONLY TELEPATHIC GAME TO EVER WALK THE EARTH! INASMUCH AS ARCADE GAMES CAN "WALK", I MEAN! (WHICH THEY CAN'T!!)

Perhaps Frenzy was sent by the dead as a means of communicating with the living. In my case, what they seemed to have been trying to communicate was: "You should get some ice cream."

Not wanting to upset the dead, I obliged.

Frenzy *did* have an Angry Otto, a Mellow Otto, a Sneering Otto, a Pedophilic Priest Otto, and a Homohumpin' Flamingly Queer Otto.

It's just that the game was *so friggin' hard* that no one ever got past Level Four to meet the other Ottoi (check out my Greek plural there!).

Adam

Was it really necessary to designate the Otto character as "Evil Otto"? Surely the bulk of us were able to figure it out, what with he finding it so amusing to take humans from a crash-landed ship and put them into an inescapable death maze. Unless there were a series of other Ottos like "Angsty Otto," "Grumpy Otto," "Paedophilic Otto" and "Heroic Otto" or whatnot.

Hmm... it's too bad that "Frenzy," which was a sequel to Berzerk, didn't expand on that.