Gorf (Arcade)

Gorf is a compilation game with five mini-games included, all being fixed bottom of the screen shooters. The firing scheme was also unique at the time, with a "quark laser", which pressing the trigger on the joystick would cancel out the first shot and replace it with another one.

The game was created by Midway in 1981.

Games[]

Astro Battles[]

At the very start of a game, a large Gorf robot appears at the top of the screen, which it moves very rapidly from one side to the other while spitting out invaders (as it is a bit of a Space Invaders clone). If a player is able to shoot the robot, it will continue distributing invaders. There are no bunkers like on Space Invaders, but rather a shield that covers a large area of the lower portion of the screen. Like with bunkers, though, invaders’ shots will poke holes in it. The shield disappears briefly with every shot the player takes.

Along with Gorf robots hopping across the screen, the U. F. O. from the original Space Invaders, as well as a second, differently-shaped bonus ship appears as well at times. Also, if a player’s ship gets destroyed with only two invaders (or less) left, the game will still advance to the next wave.

Laser Attack[]

This game featured ships that would fire a laser that would make a very long path down the screen, along with having other ships (and small Gorf robots) that would peel off from their formations and make an attack run at players. If the player did not destroy a ship or robot before it reached the bottom of the screen it would reappear at the top. The ships would move individually peeling off from the formation, as well as the formation also moving very quickly at an angle to another area of the screen before pausing so the ships discharging the lasers could pause and fire a shot at the player.

Galaxians[]

This is a clone of Galaxian, where several rows of aliens would peel off from their formation and make a bombing run at the player's ship; if the player does not destroy an alien when it passes the player it will reappear at the top of the screen. There are fewer aliens during a wave than on the original, although there is the addition of the occasional Gorf robot appearing above the aliens.

Space Warp[]

This game involves shooting ships that come out of a black hole that fire at the player while moving at a circular motion around the screen, which their path becomes larger and larger with each successive rotation. A series of dots surrounding the black hole indicates how many ships are left.

Flag Ship[]

This is the final stage before the game starts over at a higher difficulty level. The player has to shoot through a shield first in order to begin attacking the flag ship. As the ship starts taking damage, pieces of debris fly off from the ship, which can destroy the player's ship upon contact, although the debris can be shot for points. The ship can only be destroyed via a well-placed shot in its reaction chamber.

Fun facts/additional features[]

Gorf was one of the earlier games that talked. The player would also receive a rank, as each time a player made it through all five games their rank would increase.

The player could move their ship in several directions, as well as being able to maneuver around the bottom few inches of the screen (unlike with just moving left and right on Space Invaders and Galaxian).

Players’ ships would get destroyed by various enemy fire, craft, debris, and even the point values that briefly appeared onscreen on Laser Attack after enemy ships were destroyed.

All home versions are missing the Galaxians game, since it would require a second license, as Namco originally made Galaxian. (The game would later be ported to the Atari 8-bit computer line, the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, BBC Micro, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, and VIC-20.)