1983 · Creative Sparks · Action · Arcade

Orc Attack

The humans came in their thousands. They poisoned our food supplies and made the waters toxic. We escaped to the mountains but the damage had been done Having ingested the poisonous fruits we now suffer from explosive flatulence ... Overflowing with humor and flatulent rebellion, Orc Attack is a third-person cooperative beat-em-up.

Released: 1983
Platforms: Atari 8-bit Commodore 64 Commodore C64/128/MAX ZX Spectrum
Genres: Action Arcade Shoot 'em up
Developers: Creative Sparks Aackosoft
Publishers: Creative Sparks
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: Side view
Themes: Action Fantasy
Country: United Kingdom
Languages: English

About

Orc Attack is a fixed shooter video game written by Dean Lock for Atari 8-bit computers and published in 1983 by Thorn EMI. The game was re-released, along with Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum ports, when Thorn rebranded as Creative Sparks, and later at budget price by Sparklers and Top Ten. In Orc Attack, the player protects a castle wall by dropping boulders on ladder climbing orcs. Though the visuals are low resolution, Orc Attack has a high level of violence.

Keywords

orcs

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The player moves back and forth along the top of a castle wall, defending it from orcs below which shoot arrows at the player and others which use ladders to scale the wall. The player can kill orcs and destroy ladders by picking up rocks from the left and right sides of the ramparts, then dropping them. Should an orc climb all the way to the top, the player can pick up a sword instead of a rock and kill it.

After a while, the rocks are replaced with boiling oil. Dropping oil starts a fire at the bottom of the screen which engulfs the orcs and ladders, ending the round. The number of orcs killed during the round is counted up.

Reception

Atari 8-bit magazine ANALOG Computing called Orc Attack "easily the most violent and gratuitously satisfying shoot-'em-up on the market today (although 'drop-'em-down' might be a more accurate label)." Arcade Express concluded, "Orc Attack combines fast-paced action with lots of strategy to produce a strong overall program"—8/10.

ZX Spectrum magazine CRASH gave Orc Attack a 91% rating.