"Hey! Ratatouille belongs on evil school cafeteria menus, not Chuck E. Cheese's!"

I suppose derivative art came in vogue some time in the 1920's with Modernism, and people are still trying to make a cheap buck ''re-writing classics with a modern tilt.'' Folks in the video-game industry, however, took the initiative much quicker. This is seen in GORF, which managed an unprecedented blend of variety and unoriginality--well, for anything outside a minor rock band's ''Greatest Hits'' album, even if they include the potentially heinous specter of ''new BONUS PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED songs.'' Gorf has five stages; the first is a Space Invaders duplicate where only the colors(green, red and yellow.) To its credit, it answers the question, ''Mommy, where do Space Invaders come from?'' Well, this big bouncing triangular alien at the top, which you can actually hit, shoots them out. Although the shield that disappears when you fire is a nice addition, and your shooter looks slightly different, there's nothing new here even with the blue background. Next you have formations of five alien ships that pause and fire, with the ''boss'' firing a laser that blocks off a whole vertical strip for a bit; this owes a bit to Galaxian, but not as much as the next screen, which is a rehash of Galaxian. There's a screen where tie fighters go in spirals until they're off the screen for good or until you shoot them. Then finally there is a mother ship where you must break through a shield(it drops fire-bombs through its own shield) and then try to hit an exhaust port. Shooting the mother ship, which is the most original part even though the basic idea may owe something to Phoenix(which used the concept of radically different levels first as well,) takes several hits. You then get to do it all over again, except the aliens get a bit tougher.

Gorf's controls allow vertical movement through the bottom third of the screen. Firing twice in succession eliminates the first bullet. You can also start a game with two coins, giving twice the number of ships--I'm not sure when this came out in relation to Stargate, but Stargate gives you a free ship where Gorf doesn't, and the dual high score list for three- and six-ship games doesn't quite make up for this stinginess.

The graphics that are not taken from other games feature aliens neither cute nor menacing. The galaxians' missiles are colored the same and almost as small as the stars. The starry background(except the all blue first scene) doesn't offer much variety, and although the growing missiles in the final wave are rather good, there's nothing really to flat-out LIKE.

There's a gratuitously long explosion when you die that interrupts the sort of stereotyped hack-futuristic shooting and background sounds you come to expect from the early eighties when electronic sounds were becoming easier to mass-produce. Overall Gorf pours them on a bit heavily. The coolest thing may be the ''insert coin'' voice when you're not playing games, which some found a slightly wicked excuse not to pour anything without a string around it down the waiting quarter slot.

Back in the frontier days of computer programming I imagine putting out Gorf was a serious task, but the game, despite its tangents, never really approaches originality. I remember eschewing it for other games, as having seen one person win it exhausted its appeal, and I stand by that assessment. It's a lot more fun once you've forgotten it a bit.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/02/01, Updated 09/02/01