Gorf review: five games wearing one cabinet

You start on Earth, shooting at a block of invaders behind a curved force field. Clear them and you are in space against diving ships. Then a stage that looks a lot like Galaxian, then a warp tunnel, then a giant flagship with a glowing core. A robot voice laughs at you between each one. That is Gorf, and it is a lot of arcade for one coin slot.

A sampler, and proud of it

Gorf has five distinct missions. The first is based on Space Invaders and another on Galaxian, and the others borrow freely from what was popular. That sounds like a knockoff, and in a way it is, but the design goal is clear and good. Every mission changes the rules just as you get comfortable, so the machine never lets you settle into autopilot.

Finish all five and you climb a rank, from Space Cadet up toward Space Avenger, and everything starts over faster. On some cabinets your rank showed on lit panels built right into the machine, a little trophy the next kid could see.

Gorf never let you get used to anything, and that was the point.

A joystick and a laser you could cancel

The ship moves freely around the lower third of the screen with a joystick, which was still unusual enough in its day that guides pointed it out. The shot works differently too. You can fire any time, but firing again makes the previous shot disappear. So you are always choosing between a shot that might land and the one you want to take right now.

Then there is the Flag Ship. You have to chip through its shield and hit the core, and every piece you knock loose goes flying somewhere you probably did not want it to.

The robot that talked back

Gorf spoke. Its robot voice came through a speech chip and taunted you, and in a loud arcade that voice cut through everything else. Losing a life to a machine that then mocked you was a new kind of insult, and players kept coming back to answer it.

What it meant back then

Here is the most American detail about Gorf. It let you buy extra lives with more quarters before the game even started. Stack a few coins on the glass, drop them in, and you began with a cushion. At a pizza place or a 7-Eleven, that turned Gorf into a decision about your allowance before it was a game. The home ports later left out the Galaxians stage, which is part of why the real cabinet felt like the complete thing.

Playing it today

It is a bit uneven, since some missions are sharper than others, but the variety still works. It is a great machine for short attention spans and a good one for anyone curious about how early designers stitched ideas together. Play until the Flag Ship, and try not to take the robot personally.