Gorf

Gorf is a fixed shooter in which the player takes control of an unnamed starship from the Interstellar Space Force with a mission to prevent the iron-fisted Empire of GORF 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.

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.

Gorf was developed by Jamie Fenton of Dave Nutting Associates (DNA). DNA had become Research and development consultants for Midway Manufacturing at the beginning of the 1970s, and they had developed several arcade games such as Gun Fight (1975), a reworking of Taito's game Western Gun. Around this period, Nutting was working on a light gun-based game where the player would attempt to shoot a character he initially christened "Gorf". The game eventually developed into Desert Gun (1977).

Fenton had worked with DNA initially to work on pinball machines. She was a co-creator on some early arcade games such as The Amazing Maze Game (1976) and 280 ZZZAP (1977) and led the team who created an early video game console, the Bally Astrocade. Some of the custom integrated circuits for the system were manipulated and later re-used in Gorf. This included customized LSI Framebuffer chip sets. These chips allowed for Exclusive or writing of images which allowed objects on the screen to pass in front of or behind other objects and backgrounds.

In the September 1981 issue of Play Meter, which reflected sales from July 3, Gorf made number one on the arcade charts. In the immediately preceding and following polls, it was fifth and third, respectively. Gorf was described by Paul Drury in Retro Gamer as providing the distributor with its biggest arcade hit since Gun Fight. Fenton later described watching players smiling and continuously putting quarters into Gorf as "better than any drug I've ever taken".

Reviewing the original arcade game, Mark S. Murley of Hi-Res Magazine said that the arcade version of "Gorf is a powerful game, if for no other reason than the pace of the action. Many veterans of popular arcade games like Defender (1981) and Tempest quickly fall by the wayside when faced with "the intensity of the various attacking buguboos" in Gorf. In an overview of similar games that have followed the release of Space Invaders, The Winona Daily News stated that it has been surpassed by similar games such as Astro Invader (1979) and Galaxian (1979), while concluding that "the tops in the post-Invader generation may be Gorf".

Along with Stratovox (1980), Taskete (1980), and Berzerk (1980), Gorf was one of the earliest video games with speech synthesis in arcade games.

Fenton's next game, The Adventures of Robby Roto! (1981) was not as successful financially in the arcades. This led to her to work on a sequel to Gorf.