Classic of the Month - GORF

Manufacture:	Dave Nutting Associates/Midway
Design:	Jay Fenton
Genre:	Shoot 'em up
Year:	1981

Although there had been space games before Space Invaders, Taito really started something with their 1978 hit arcade game. Rivals and rip-offs soon flooded the market, many of which (such as Galaxian, Galaga and Phoenix) went on to become legends in their own right, but there were plenty of others that history has forgotten. One neither I nor history can forget is 1981's GORF, developed by Dave Nutting Associates and manufactured by Midway. This game was both a imitator and an innovator in equal measure.

GORF puts you in control of decidedly familiar-looking space fighter, defending Earth from the Galactic Orbiting Robot Force (or GORF for short). If you watch the game's attract mode you will see it has five different stages, more than a few of which will be very familiar.

1. The first stage is called Astro Battles and it's a Space Invaders clone, even down to the design of the aliens. The only major difference is instead of shelters you get a force field, which the player can shoot through without damaging it, although each piece of the force field can only take one impact from an enemy missile.
2. The second stage is called Laser Attack. It features a small number of aliens flying around two gun ships, firing long straight lasers that fill the screen and restrict your movement. If you were being fussy you could say the game is a bit like Galaga, but I think that would be pushing it a bit. The key to this level is to take out the gun ships first, then life is much easier.
3. The third stage is called Galaxian and it's exactly that, only with more erratic bullet patterns. Quite how Midway got away with a direct clone of not one but two major arcade games I'll never know.
4. The forth stage is called Space Warp and it's probably the most original of the five (even if it does have a passing resemblance to Tempest). This time you are flying through a worm hole (I think), with aliens emerging one by one from a portal-like shape at the end. This is actually the easiest level of the lot, as it's possible to pick off each alien ship as soon as it appears.
5. Finally there is the Flag Ship stage, in which players battle the game's boss. This level is somewhat similar to the final level of Phoenix, with you having to blast through a shield to hit the flag ship's weak spot and blow it up.

GORF was effectively a mini-game collection, an idea designer Jay Fenton would re-use the following year with his adaptation of Tron (which also used the same pistol-grip joystick as GORF). Each stage played slightly differently and when it came to choosing where to put your precious 10p's, it did appear to offer more bang for your buck than the games it plagiarised.

If you completed all five rounds you would get a promotion, as indicated by an array of six light-up panels on the right of the screen. The ranks were:

1. Space Cadet 
2. Space Captain
3. Space Colonel
4. Space General
5. Space Warrior
6. Space Avenger

This was, to my knowledge, pretty rare and it did feel kinda nice seeing the ranks light up (although I never got past Space Captain). However, with each rank the difficulty escalated, which meant if you wanted to be a Space Avenger you needed to do more than just be consistent — you had to improve your game every rank.

Inserting a coin into a GORF machine revealed something else a bit different: more coins = more lives. The game had no continue, but by doubling your credit you could double your lives (six instead of three). The trade off being that there were separate highscore tables, so sneaky-sneaks couldn't rack up a mighty score with six lives and pass it off as a three life run.

Playing GORF also feels quite different from the games it mimics due to the fact the player's ship could also move up and down, not just left and right. This gave you the ability to dodge around enemy fire, in much the same way as Juno First. Further more, unlike either Space Invaders or Galaxian, GORF let you fire as fast as you wanted, although launching a fresh missile cancelled the one before it. This meant if you wanted to hit a high up enemy you had to be patient, where as the dive bombers could be sprayed with bullets and destroyed at close quarters. So despite the crazy bullet patterns, GORF was generally easier to play than Galaxian, Galaga or Space Invaders. 

Finally, you cannot talk about GORF without mentioning its digitised voice. Sounding somewhat like a Speak and Spell with attitude, the game taunts you throughout, with quips like, "You cannot escape the Gorfian empire" and "Some galactic defender you are!" when you get shot. It even referenced your current rank in its taunts. This helped draw crowds to the game and made it very popular indeed.

GORF was ported to a number of 8-bit computers and consoles, including the Commodore 64 and VIC-20, the Atari 800, 2600 and 5200, BBC Micro B and the ColecoVision. However, the Galaxian stage did not make it into any one these ports — and not just because of technical limitations. The video below shows the original arcade version and all of the ports, of which the ColecoVision was probably the best.

MTW