GORF

Name:	GORF
Company:	CBS
Model #:	M8776
Programmers:	Alex Leavens & Joe Gaucher
Year:	1982
Released?	Yes
Notes:	GORF stands for Galactic Orbiting Robot Force

Port of the 1981 Midway arcade game, GORF is a space shooter with five (four in the home ports) different stages that were inspired by (or outright clones of) popular arcade games of the time.  GORF actually started out as an arcade game based on Star Trek The Motion Picture, but after viewing the script programmer Jamie Fenton decided that she couldn't make a good game based on it so she recycled some ideas and turned it into one of the more memorable arcade games from the 1980s.

Mission 1: Astro Battles

Aside from sounding like a bad Star Wars knock off, Astro Battles is your bog standard Space Invaders clone.  The gimmick in the arcade version was that there was a dome shaped shield that the player could shoot through but protected them from enemy fire (until it was destroyed).  Since the 2600 version removes the shield, this level is rather unremarkable.  Here you must destroy three rows of invaders (Droids, Gorfs, and Droids) before they touch down.  The arcade version colored the background blue to indicate that this stage took place on Earth, but this nuance is lost in the 2600 port.

Mission 2: Laser Attack

While this level is actually an original idea but is clearly influenced by Phoenix.  Here you must defeat a small convoy of ships which consist of three Kamikaze Invaders (which as the name implies will try and ram into your ship), a Laser Ship which fires a huge laser beam at you at random intervals, and the Fly Gorf ship which sort of acts like the boss.  Your goal here is to destroy all the ships, but if you destroy the Laser Ship before destroying all the others it will respawn in 4 seconds.

Mission 3: Space Warp

This is another original idea but seems oddly familiar.  On this screen space ships fly out of the 'space web' at the top center of the screen and gradually grow larger as they circle the screen.  This screen is somewhat reminiscent of Gyruss which would be released a few years later.  The arcade version of this screen had a cool 'warping effect' with lines streaming out of the 'space web' but those have been removed from the 2600 port making this screen rather dull.  After destroying five space ships you'll move onto the final screen.

Mission 4: Flag Ship

The Flag Ship stage is the only remnant of GORFs Star Trek The Motion Picture origins.  Jamie Fenton has said that the flag ship resembles the USS Enterprise although it has been heavily modified.  Here the player must shoot the reactor vent on the Flag Ship while it paces back and forth at the top of the screen dropping missiles on you (use The Force Luke!).  While GORF may not be the first arcade game to have a boss stage (Pleiades and Phoenix also had them) it was one of the earliest.  Once you successfully destroy the Flag Ship you'll start back at the first stage at a higher difficulty.

You may have noticed that the 2600 version of Gorf (along with almost every other home port) is missing on stage.  In the arcade version the third stage is actually an outright clone of Galaxian (actually called Galaxians) only at a reduced scale.  This was because Midway was distributing Galxian for Namco at the time and assumed they had the rights to use the gameplay.  While Namco didn't stop Midway from using Galaxian in the arcade version, publishing rights prevented it from being included in home versions (Atari owned the console rights).  Also missing from most home ports is the speech samples that play at different points in the game.  The speech was provided by a Votrax SC-01 which was also used in various computer speech synthesizers and some other arcade games of the time (most notably Wizard of Wor).  Although amazing for the time, the Votrax was quite primitive and the speech tended to sound more like a Speak and Spell that was having a stroke than audible words.

While GORF may not be the most original game out there, it actually holds up even today.  One of the things that makes GORF fun is that each stage is completely different and offers a little taste of various other popular arcade games.  CBS Electronics offered a medal for players that scored 15,000 points or higher and sent in a photograph as proof.  These medals are fairly rare today and are highly collectable.

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