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.
Gameplay[ | ]
Gorf consists of five missions per level.
- Astro Battles: The player must shoot the advancing army of aliens as they slowly descend toward Earth.
- Laser Attack: The player must shoot down two satellites that periodically shoot down laser beams at you while also destroying their escorts.
- Galaxians: The player must destroy a fleet of Galaxian aliens. (This mission was left out of the home versions due to copyright issues.)
- Space Warp: The player must shoot at aliens swirling their way through a wormhole in space.
- Flag Ship: The player must chip away at the Gorfian flagship's outer hull to breach its nuclear reactor core in order to destroy it.
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.
Notes[ | ]
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.
Gallery[ | ]
Atari 2600 Boxart
ColecoVision Boxart
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