How to play Gorf online
- Move your fighter: left and right arrow keys
- Fire your laser: Space bar
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch); after a game over, the fire button also restarts
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
The four missions
You start with five fighters and unlimited ammunition, but only one shot on screen at a time: firing again cancels your previous shot if it has not hit anything yet. You earn an extra fighter every 10,000 points.
- Astro Battles: columns of Gorfs and Droids march down towards Earth, dropping bombs, much like Space Invaders. If one reaches the ground, the mission ends and you lose a fighter.
- Laser Attack: a Laser Ship fires a beam at you, guarded by three Kamikaze Invaders that try to ram you and a Flying Gorf. If you destroy the Laser Ship before its escorts, a new one arrives within a few seconds.
- Space Warp: five Gorfian Attackers spiral out of a swirling web one at a time, firing torpedoes as they come.
- Flag Ship: dodge the homing missiles and land a shot in the Flag Ship’s reactor vent to blow it apart.
After the Flag Ship falls, the cycle starts again with faster, more aggressive enemies, and you move up in rank from Space Cadet through Captain, Colonel, General and Warrior to Space Avenger after 20 completed missions. The manual lists nine levels of mission sequences. The game ends when your last fighter is destroyed.
| Target | Points |
|---|---|
| Gorf or Droid (Astro Battles) | 50 |
| Flying Gorf (Laser Attack) | 100 |
| Gorfian Attacker (Space Warp) | 100 |
| Flag Ship | 1,000 |
Kamikaze Invaders that crash into you score nothing, and shooting down bombs and missiles earns no points either.
Tips
- Don’t spray shots. Because a new shot cancels the old one, firing too fast can wipe out a shot that was about to hit. Wait for each one to land or leave the screen.
- Clear the escorts first in Laser Attack. Killing the Laser Ship early only brings in a replacement.
- Thin out the lowest invaders in Astro Battles. The mission is lost the moment one touches the ground.
- Be patient with the Flag Ship. The vent is a small target; line up under it between missiles rather than firing blindly.
From arcade to 2600
The arcade Gorf was designed by Jamie Fenton at Dave Nutting Associates and was famous for its talking robot villain, who taunted the “Space Cadet” with synthesised speech. The arcade machine had five missions, but the third one, Galaxians, was left out of the home versions because the Galaxian design belonged to Namco. The 2600 cartridge also has no speech; among the home versions only the Commodore 64 one could talk, with an add-on voice module. Roklan also made the Atari 400/800 computer version.
Reviews at the time were divided. Some magazines called it a solid, stripped-down conversion, while others dismissed it as little more than a Space Invaders copy. It still received a Certificate of Merit for Best Solitaire Video Game at the 4th annual Arkie Awards.
