When is a Space Invaders rip-off not a Space Invaders rip-off? When it also rips off Galaxian and Gyruss!
No, that’s unfair to poor old Gorf, an arcade game by Bally Midway that was ported to Atari 8-Bit by Roklan Software. Gorf is an entertaining and enjoyable game in its own right that most certainly has its own identity — albeit perhaps not what was originally intended.
This began life as an adaptation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, of all things, but was presumably adapted into what it eventually became after someone at Bally Midway figured that a game involving a 20-minute sequence slowly panning around a spaceship with nothing happening probably wouldn’t be that much fun. The end product was rather good… and bastard hard.
Atari A to Z 
Hi Pete — I didn’t even know you were doing this blog. That’s great — there needs to be more knowledge out there about Atari 8-bit. I don’t really know much abut it myself unless you count a handful of games on the 5200 (which as you know used much the same hardware as the computers).
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Hi, good to see you! I’ve had this site for a little while but I revamped it a little while back to be a convenient home for the videos I’ve been making on 8-Bit and ST games.
Over time I’d like to cover some software and peripherals too but I need to make some time for that and figure out the best way to do so. (I also need to get my 8-bit’s disk drive up and running — my 1050 died a while back; the beast that is the 810 is still going strong, but that only does single-density disks.)
I agree the Atari computers (particularly the 8-bit range) need more love — there’s a strong community for them in Europe even today, but in the States the ol’ C64 gets a lot more love, and even over here the ZX Spectrum tends to be talked about a bit more as the “leading” computer of that generation.
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