| GORF | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | Midway |
| Publisher(s) | Midway |
| Designer(s) | Jamie Fenton |
| Platform(s) | Arcade |
| Release date(s) | 1981 |
| Genre(s) | Shooter |
| Mode(s) | Up to 2 players, alternating turns |
| Input methods | 8-way Joystick, trigger |
| Cabinet | Upright, cabaret, cocktail |
Gorf is an arcade game released in 1981 by Midway Mfg., whose name was advertised as an acronym for "Galactic Orbiting Robot Force". It is a multiple-mission fixed shooter with five distinct modes of play, essentially making it five games in one. It is well-known for its use of synthesized speech, a new feature at the time.
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Gorf's objective is simply to destroy all enemies. The player controls a spaceship that can move slowly left, right, up and down. (Its vertical movement is limited to the lower one-third of the screen.) The ship can fire a single shot (called a "quark laser" in this game), which travels slowly up the screen. Unlike similar games, where the player cannot fire again until his existing shot has disappeared, the player can "re-fire" his laser at any time, causing the existing shot to disappear immediately (if it hasn't already).
Gameplay is broken up into five distinct "missions", each one essentially a minigame in its own right. Successfully completing all five missions will increase the player's rank and loop back to the first mission. The game continues until the player loses all of his lives. The player can advance through the ranks of Space Cadet, Space Captain, Space Colonel, Space General, Space Warrior, and Space Avenger, with a higher difficulty level at each rank. Along the way, a robotic, synthesized voice heckles and threatens the player, often calling the player by his current rank (for example, "Some galactic defender you are, Space Cadet!"). Some versions of Gorf also display the player's current rank via a series of lit panels in the cabinet.
Vague collision detection was a feature of the game intended to shorten the playing time - enemy shots that did not appear to actually impact on the ship object would still destroy it if they passed in close proximity.
Gorf is well-known for introducing or popularizing two new features to the video game market. Its most notable feature is its robotic voice, powered by the Votrax speech synthesis chip. Most games, even today, that feature human and robot speech use digitized voice samples rather than a speech synthesizer. Also, Gorf is one of the first games to allow the player to buy additional lives before starting the game. Most games offer a predetermined number of lives (usually three) and allow the player to earn additional lives throughout the game. Gorf, which was usually set to offer two lives per coin, allows the player to insert extra coins to buy up to seven starting lives.
The underlying hardware platform for Gorf allowed arcade operators to easily swap the pattern, CPU and RAM boards with other similar games, such as Wizard of Wor. Only the game logic and ROM boards are specific to each game.
Gorf was originally intended to be a tie-in with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but when the game designers read the film's script, they realized that the concept would not work as a video game and changed its title. Even so, the player's ship bears a passing resemblance to the Starship Enterprise viewed from above.
The central goal of each mission is to destroy all enemies.
 Mission 1: Astro Battles |
 Mission 2: Laser Attack |
 Mission 3: Galaxians |
 Mission 4: Space Warp |
 Mission 5: Flag Ship |
Mission 1: Astro Battles
The first mission is almost an exact clone of Space
Invaders. This is the only mission that is not set in
space, but rather against a sky-blue background. A small force of
enemies (24 in Gorf vs. 55 in Space Invaders)
attacks in the classic pattern set by the original game. The player
is protected by a glittering parabolic force
field that is gradually worn away by enemy fire. The force
field switches off temporarily while the player's shots pass
through it.
Mission 2: Laser Attack
In this mission, the player must battle two formations of five
enemies each. Each formation contains three yellow enemies that
attempt to dive-bomb the player, a white gun that fires a single laser beam, and a red miniature
version of the Gorf robot.
Mission 3: Galaxians
This mission is a clone of Galaxian, with the key differences being
the number of enemies (24 in Gorf vs. 46 in
Galaxian) and the way the enemies fire. Gameplay is
otherwise similar to the original game.
Mission 4: Space Warp
Mission 4 places the player in a sort of wormhole, where enemies fly outward from the
center of the screen and attempt to either shoot down or collide
with the player's ship. It is possible to shoot enemy shots in this
level.
Mission 5: Flag Ship
The final mission is a one-on-one battle with one of the earliest
bosses in the video game industry. The Flag
Ship is protected by its own force field (similar to the one
protecting the player in Mission 1), and it flies back and forth
and fires at the player. To defeat it, the player must break
through the force field and destroy the ship's core — if they hit a
different part of the ship, the part breaks off and flies in a
random direction, potentially posing a risk to the player's ship.
It should be noted that the part of the mother ship that breaks off
can actually be shot by the player to earn bonus points. If
successful, the Flag Ship explodes in a dramatic display, the
player advances to the next rank, and play continues on Mission 1,
with the difficulty increased.
The sequel, Ms. Gorf, was never released. It was programmed in the programming language Forth. The source code for the prototype is owned by Gorf programmer Jay Fenton (now known as Jamie Fenton). The game exists only as source code stored on a set of 8-inch floppy disks, and is difficult to retrieve.[1][2]
Gorf was ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and ColecoVision game consoles and the Atari 8-bit, BBC Micro, Commodore 64 and VIC-20 personal computers in 1982. Due to copyright issues, the Galaxians mission was removed from all ports. It was later ported to the Atari Jaguar by a hobbyist programmer, but quickly removed from the market because the author neglected to secure any permission from all of the copyright holders. An enhanced conversion of the game was recently released for Nintendo's GameBoy Advance. This port is a re-code by Jess Ragan using Dragon Basic and not emulation. A copy can be procured from this site.
On January 31, 2009, John McCann of Altura, USA, played a 4 hour and 45 minute game of Gorf to set a new Gorf world record of 943,580 points.[3] His game lasted 598 missions. Not only did McCann beat the long standing former world record by almost 300,000 points, but McCann scored over 733,000 on his first ship.
The previous world record score for Gorf, recognized by Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records, was set by Todd Rogers on November 24, 1982 at Haunted Trails in Burbank, Illinois with a score of 653,990.[4]
Gorf | Table
of Contents | Walkthrough
| Gorf | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | Midway Games |
| Publisher(s) | Midway Games |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Shooter |
| System(s) | Arcade, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64/128, ColecoVision, Commodore VIC-20 |
| Players | 1-2 |
Gorf is an arcade game released in 1981 by Midway Mfg.. It was the first game in arcades to introduce multiple scenes in one game, even before Donkey Kong. It is a multiple-mission fixed shooter with five distinct modes of play, essentially making it five games in one. It is also well-known for its use of synthesized speech, a new feature at the time. Midway still owned the rights to publish Space Invaders and Galaxian in the United States and was looking for a way to make more money from those titles. Dave Nutting and Jay Fenton designed a game where the player could play through a series of space shooters instead of playing the same concept over and over again.
In Gorf, which stands for "Galactic Orbiting Robot Force", the player must take control of an attack ship that serves as the last line of defense between earth and the invading fleet. To accomplish the task of ridding Earth of this menace, you must pilot your ship through five distinct missions. First you must eradicate the invaders from space in an ASTRO BATTLE. Then you must launch to the main fleet, only to be stopped by an attack squad in LASER ATTACK. You will finally reach the fleet and destroy them in GALAXIANS. Then you will engage the enemy while you warp to the flag ship in SPACE WARP. And finally, you must take the flag ship down in none other than FLAG SHIP.
Each time you successfully complete all five missions, you move up one rank and start over again at a higher degree of difficulty. Gorf created a little but of controversy. While Astro Battle was remarkably similar to Space Invaders, Namco felt that the use of the Galaxian game play was unauthorized. Namco subsequently forbid the Galaxian portion of the game to be included in any home conversion of the game, so most conversion contain only four stages. But there were still a few home conversions made, and they were quite popular.
Wikis
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THE EVIL
GORFIAN ROBOTIC
EMPIRE HAS ATTACKED
YOUR ASSIGNMENT IS TO
REPEL THE INVASION AND
LAUNCH A COUNTERATTACK
YOU WILL
ENGAGE VARIOUS
HOSTILE SPACECRAFT
AS YOU JOURNEY TOWARD
A DRAMATIC CONFRONTATION
WITH THE ENEMY FLAG SHIP| Gorf | |
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| Developer(s) | Midway |
| Publisher(s) | Midway Arcade CBS Electronics Atari 2600 Atari 5200 Coleco ColecoVision Commodore Commodore 64 Commodore VIC 20 Roklan Atari 8-Bit |
| Designer(s) | Jamie Fenton |
| Release date | Atari 2600: 1982 (NA) |
| Genre | Fixed Vertical Shoot 'em up |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Age rating(s) | N/A Arcade Atari 2600 ColecoVision |
| Platform(s) | Arcade Atari 2600 Atari 8 Bit Commodore VIC-20 BBC Micro ColecoVision Atari 5200 Commodore 64 |
| Input | Arcade: 8-Way Joystick, Trigger Atari 2600 Joystick ColecoVision Controller Atari 5200 Controller |
| Credits | Soundtrack | Codes | Walkthrough | |
Gorf is an arcade game released in 1981. It was originally intended to be a tie-in with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but the developers changed its title when they realized from reading the script that the movie's concept would not work as a videogame. The game was later ported to home computers, Atari 2600, ColecoVision, and Atari 5200.
Gorf consists of five missions per level.
In the original arcade game, the player can start the game with double the number of ships of a single game credit by adding an additional credit to the machine. In some regions, the player can start with 2 or 4 ships; in other regions, it is 3 or 6 ships, depending on the operator's setting.
The player fires a "quark laser" which allows him to fire his next shot without waiting for his last shot to reach the top of the screen if he misses; the previous shot disappears when the next shot is fired.
The player starts off as a Space Cadet and then graduates through the ranks to Space Captain, Space Colonel, Space General, Space Warrior, and finally Space Avenger with each new level. The game gets harder as the player gets a higher rank.
This game was to be followed by a sequel called Ms. Gorf, which was never released.
The Atari 5200 version was known to have terrible controls.
An arcade-perfect homebrew adaptation of this game was created for the Atari Jaguar CD, but was removed from the market because the author neglected to secure any permission from the copyright holders.
A freebie homebrew version of this game, also featuring the Galaxians mission, is currently being developed for the Gameboy Advance.
 Atari 2600 Boxart |
 ColecoVision Boxart |
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   | Article at The Dot Eaters - The Dot Eaters - Player2 Stage3 - Classic Video Game History |
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