Gorf

GORF
Developer(s)	Dave Nutting Associates
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
Cabinet	Upright, cabaret, cocktail
Display	Raster, 19" monitor

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.

Gameplay

The player controls a spaceship that can move left, right, up and down around the lower one-third of the screen. The ship can fire a single shot (called a "quark laser" in this game), which travels vertically up the screen. Unlike similar games, where the player cannot fire again until his existing shot has disappeared, the player can choose to fire another shot at any time; if the previous shot is still on screen it disappears.

Gorf consists of five distinct "missions", each with its own patterns of enemies. The central goal of each mission is to destroy all enemies in that wave, which takes the player to the next mission. Successfully completing all five missions will increase the player's rank and loop back to the first mission, where play continues on a higher difficulty level. 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 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.

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  Mission 1: Astro Battles

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  Mission 2: Laser Attack

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  Mission 3: Galaxians

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  Mission 4: Space Warp

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  Mission 5: Flag Ship

The missions are:

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.
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.
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.
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.
5. Flag Ship: 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 a different part of the ship is hit the player receives bonus points and the part breaks off and flies in a random direction, potentially posing a risk to the player's ship. If the player successful hits the Flag Ship's core, 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.

Features

Gorf is well-known for introducing or popularizing two new features to the video game market. Its most notable feature is its robotic synthesised speech, powered by the Votrax speech chip.

Gorf was 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.

History

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.^{[citation needed]} Even so, the player's ship bears a passing resemblance to the Starship Enterprise viewed from above.

Sequel

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 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]

Ports

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.

Competitive play

On July 17, 2011, Keith Swanson of Orlando, Fla, set a new Gorf world record score of 1,129,660 points recognized by Twin Galaxies. It took a total of 6 hours 30 minutes of game play to achieve that high score . Keith Swanson is the first person to ever score a million points on 3 ship settings. His game lasted 826 missions. The previous world record was set by John McCann in 2009 with a score of 943,580^[3]

The third best 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]

References

1. ^ "ClassicGaming Expo 2000: Arcade Games Get A Personality" from Classic Gaming.com
2. ^ Secrets of Ms. Gorf
3. ^ "Twin Galaxies' Gorf High Score Rankings". Retrieved 27 December 2009. http://www.twingalaxies.com. 
4. ^ "Twin Galaxies' Gorf Todd Rogers' Score". Retrieved 27 December 2009. http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=22&sid=9306. 

External links

• Gorf at the Killer List of Videogames
• Gorf guide at StrategyWiki
• The home versions of Gorf at MobyGames
• Article at The Dot Eaters, featuring a history of Gorf
• Video from the C64 Version on archive.org