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1981 video game From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gorf is an arcade video game released in 1981 by Midway Manufacturing, whose name was advertised as an acronym for "Galactic Orbiting Robot Force". It is a fixed shooter with five distinct levels, the first of which is based on Space Invaders and another on Galaxian. The game makes use of synthesized speech for the Gorfian robot which taunts the player, powered by the Votrax speech chip.[3] Gorf allows the player to buy two additional lives per quarter before starting the game, for a maximum of seven lives.
Gorf | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Midway Roklan Corporation (Atari 8-bit/5200) CBS Electronics (2600) Nuvatec (ColecoVision) |
Publisher(s) | |
Designer(s) | Jamie Fenton |
Platform(s) | |
Release | |
Genre(s) | Fixed shooter |
Mode(s) |
|
Arcade system | Astrocade[1] |
The home ports omit the Galaxians stage because the Japanese developer Namco owns the rights to the franchise.
Gorf is a fixed shooter in which the players take control of an unnamed starship from the Interstellar Space Force with a mission to prevent the Gorfian Empire from conquering Earth. The ship is capable of moving freely in all directions around the lower third of the screen under the control of a joystick. This was a departure from older vertically-oriented linear shooters, including Space Invaders and Galaxian, which allowed only horizontal movement of the player's ship controlled by left and right buttons. At the time, the joystick input and two-dimensional movement were still unusual enough that contemporary video game guides noted them as distinctive features of Gorf.[4][5]
Gameplay consists of five distinct missions; every mission presents its own unique playstyle, but the central goal of each is to destroy all enemies. Successfully completing all five missions loops the player back to the first mission and also increases the player's rank, which represents the current difficulty level of the game. Gameplay continues until the player loses all of their lives.
Before starting a new game, players can buy up to seven additional lives by purchasing more credits; an extra life is also granted after clearing the first five missions. Unlike similar games where the player can only shoot their weapon after an existing shot has disappeared from the screen, the ship is equipped with a laser cannon capable of firing a single vertical shot (called a "quark laser") at any time, although doing so causes the previous shot to disappear.
Players can advance through the ranks of Space Cadet, Space Captain, Space Colonel, Space General, Space Warrior and Space Avenger, which increases the speed and difficulty of the game and introduces more enemy patterns. Depending on the version, the player's current rank is displayed via a series of integrated lit panels on the cabinet.
Along the way, a robotic voice heckles and threatens the player, often calling and mocking the player by their current rank. Examples:
Gorf was originally intended to be a tie-in with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but after reading the film's script, the game designers realized that the concept would not work as a video game;[3][7] however, the player's ship still resembles the Starship Enterprise.[1] 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, since only the game logic and ROM boards are specific to each game.[1][8] The name of the game is also Frog spelled backwards; "Frog" was the nickname of designer Jamie Fenton during college.[1][8][9]
Gorf was released in North America in February 1981 and, notably, became one of the first titles to use synthesised speech (powered by the Votrax speech chip) as well as one of the first games to feature multiple screens.[1][3]
Gorf was ported to the Atari 8-bit computers, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, BBC Micro, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, and VIC-20 by multiple developers between 1982 and 1983. Because of copyright issues, the Galaxians mission was removed from almost all versions.[1][8] The Commodore 64 port is the only one with synthesized speech—via the Magic Voice Speech module.[10]
Publication | Score |
---|---|
AllGame | (Arcade) [11] (2600) [12] (C64) [13] |
Computer and Video Games | (VIC-20) 3 / 10[14] (ColecoVision) 65%[15] |
Eurogamer | (Arcade) 8 / 10[16] |
Electronic Fun | (VIC-20) [17] (2600) [18] (ColecoVision) [19] |
Home Computing Weekly | (VIC-20) [20] |
TeleMatch | (ColecoVision) 3 / 6[21] |
Tilt | (2600) [22] |
Video Games Player | (ColecoVision) B+[23] |
Publication | Award |
---|---|
Video (1983) | Best Solitaire Video Game (2600)[24]: 30 |
Video (1984) | Best Computer Game Audio-Visual Effects (2600)[25]: 28 |
Electronic Gaming Monthly (2006) | #183 Top 200 Best Games of All Time (Arcade)[26] |
The arcade version reached the top of the US Play Meter arcade charts in September 1981.[27] The Atari 2600 version of the game received a Certificate of Merit in the category of "Best Solitaire Video Game" at the 4th annual Arkie Awards,[24][28] and received the "1984 Best Computer Game Audio-Visual Effects" award at the 5th Arkies the following year. At the 5th Arkies, the judges indicated that the Atari versions had out-polled both the ColecoVision and Commodore 64 versions of the game, and they suggested it is the game's "varied action" which "keeps players coming back again and again".[25]
Regarding the VIC-20 version, Electronic Games wrote that "this fast-moving colorful entry is a must ... one of the best games available for the VIC-20",[29] and Ahoy! stated that the VIC-20 version "still has my vote for the best of the bunch ... The graphics are excellent".[30]
Gorf is included in the 2010 book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die.[31]
A planned sequel, Ms. Gorf, was never released. It was programmed in the programming language Forth. The source code for the prototype is owned by Jamie Fenton. The game exists only as source code stored on a set of 8-inch floppy disks, and would require access to a development environment that no longer exists in order to compile it into executable machine code.[7][32]
In 2006, an unlicensed port of Gorf was released for the Atari Jaguar CD by hobbyist developer 3D Stooges Software Studios.[33][34][35] Another hobbyist clone for the Game Boy Advance was made available in 2010.[36][37] Other independent developers have also created titles influenced by Gorf on other platforms.[38][39][40]
On July 8, 2019, Matthew Garrett set a new world record score in Gorf of 1,543,160 points, recognized by Twin Galaxies. His game spanned 953 missions across 6 hours 41 minutes. Garrett holds the world record for both the arcade 3 & 6 life settings and is the first person recorded to reach mission 500 (having beaten each of the 5 individual levels 100 times) without losing a life. The previous world record was set by Keith Swanson in 2011 with a score of 1,129,660.[41]
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