By the title of this post you might think I was going to tell you a story about catching someone in a military uniform that they didn’t earn. Nope, this is a different stolen valor story. My valor was stolen by a 20something year old dude who ran the local arcade in my hometown.

Our fulltime RV life has brought us back around to my hometown of Marshall, TX where we are hanging around mooch docking off my parents for the holidays. The other day I drove by what is left of the mall here, and it reminded me of this story of stolen valor.

Do you remember Aladdin’s Castle Arcades? We had one in our mall back in the 80’s when I was 13ish. The mall was THE place to hang out, and the arcade was one of the hotspots for the video game enthusiasts before home consoles like Atari, ColecoVision, and Intellivision came along. Way before all the Nintendos, Play Stations, and XBoxes. My best friend, Chris Bradford, and I would head straight to that arcade whenever we could scrape some quarters together. Some of our favorite games where the classics like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Joust, Defender, Galaga, Ms. Pac-Man, and Missile Command, to name a few. Then one day we walked into the arcade to see a new game tucked into a forgotten dark corner. It was called GORF, which stands for Galactic Orbiting Robot Force. I was actually today years old when I found that out while doing research for this post. It was never printed on the game anywhere. I learned it from a YouTube video that I linked to at the end of this post. Thirteen year old Ari didn’t care what it meant anyway. All he knew is that it looked really cool and, along with Chris, popped a quarter in to see what it was all about.

This is what we found out. It had a flight control stick with a firing trigger that was way more cool than the common joystick/fire button configuration. That game was actually five games in one that you progressed through as you beat them:

1. Astro Battles – This was almost identical to Space Invaders with some subtle changes.
2. Laser Attack – This was Galaga-like with two formations of five enemy ships that dive bombed you.
3. Galaxians – This was a pure clone of the arcade game Galaxian.
4. Space Warp – This mission places the player in a sort of wormhole, where enemies fly outward from the center of the screen and attempt to either shoot down or collide with you.
5. Flag Ship – This final game had a huge ship that was protected by a force shield and sent laser cannon blasts your way. The only way you could defeat it was by punching through the shield and then scoring a direct hit on the ship’s core. If you were good, you could get shot into a little exhaust port that connected to the core. “You’re all clear kid, now let’s blow this thing and go home“. If you weren’t good enough to get it in the exhaust port (that sounded dirty), your missed shots would blast parts of the ship off until the core became exposed and you could hit it.

After defeating the flag ship, the game started over again at level 1 and progressed through all 5 again. However, the enemies became more difficult on each cycle through, until they became very hard to beat. The game also featured one of the first speech synthesizers. The robotic voice would taunt you as you played the game. Chris and I played hours and hours of GORF. You would think that the repetitive nature of the game might make our attention wane over time, and it probably would have if it wasn’t for one other feature:

It had ranks! Starting at the lowly Space Cadet, all the way up to Space Avenger! Every time you completed the five games your rank would increase, and oh man did I want to be a Space Avenger. Wanted it so bad that Chris and I spent every spare quarter we had playing this game for months on end. My skill level increased (more than Chris’ I might add) as time went on, but try as I might, I could only achieve the rank of Space Warrior. Now that rank is nothing to be ashamed about. It wasn’t easy to rise that high. Certainly something to be proud of if you were a geek like me. It wasn’t enough though. I wanted it all! I needed to be a Space Avenger!

Then one night my goal became attainable. Chris and I had been in the arcade playing GORF. We were off our game. I don’t even think we had even made it past Space Colonel. As we got frustrated with our failure to protect the galaxy, we decided to use the rest of our change to go to Hotdog On A Stick across the hall from the arcade to get a corndog. When we were done, we had planned on getting on our bicycles and heading home. It was getting late and we were supposed to be back before the street lights came on. That’s when we realized we both had exactly one quarter left over from our meal. What the hell, we figured. Might as well play one more game of GORF before heading out. As bad as we had been playing that night, it wouldn’t take long.

We entered the arcade, shuffled over to the isolated corner we knew so well, and began to play. It was different this time. It was like there was some kind of magic in the processed meatcicles we had ingested. We were on fire! Playing better than we had ever before. We quickly increased in rank until we both found ourselves in the all to familiar position of Space Warrior. Unfortunately, Chris’ last ship collided with a dive bomber on the Laser Attack level and disintegrated. After a few choice curse words uttered at a high decibel level, he settled in to watch my efforts and to cheer me on. I was deep into the Galaxian level when I heard the manager, a pimply faced red headed dude in his late teens or early 20’s, tell us we only had five minutes until the arcade closed. This shocked me as I knew the arcade closed at 10 O’Clock. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was indeed five minutes until ten. The street lights had come on a while ago and I was surely going to be in trouble when I got home. This distraction cost my one of my two remaining ships when I didn’t react fast enough to avoid a laser blast. I put all thought of getting in trouble out of my mind. Achieving the rank of Space Avenger was more important than being home on time. At least it was to me. Not so much with the parents.

I concentrated on the task at hand and completed the Galaxian level. Up next was my nemesis. The Space Warp level. I died here every time. The aliens came whirling out of that wormhole so fast at this rank that I could barely see them, much less shoot them. Tonight was gonna be different though! I charged in and began to blast them away! Dodging all their attacks, keeping my one remaining ship intact. That’s when the manager declared in a loud voice right behind us that the arcade was closed and we had to leave the game. No fucking way was I walking away from the game. I was too close! Chris pleaded with the guy to give us a few more minutes, that I was almost to the rank of Space Avenger, but it didn’t persuade him. He just kept yelling at us to get out. All this racket was not inducive to optimal spaceship combat operations and I almost bit it. I don’t know how I managed to do it, but I avoided obliteration from a collision with the last alien ship and got a shot off as he flew by that pixelated him out of existence.

I had never gotten this far! Here I was on the Flag Ship level. All I had to do was to defeat it and I would reach the rank of SPACE AVENGER! However, at this point I was fighting two battles, or more accurately I was fighting a battle on the screen as Chris fought a battle with the manager. As I began to blast away at the flag ship’s shield while avoiding it’s laser cannon fire, the manager tried to reach around the back of the game and flip the power switch to off. Chris was only 13 going up against a 20 year old, but he managed to pull his hand away from the game console, then stand there blocking the way to the back of the machine.

The manager walked off in a huff and Chris and I both thought he had finally decided to let us play it out. I once again focused my full attention on my goal. I chipped away at the shield until there was a sizable hole in it. I avoided a few more laser cannon blasts and then lined my ship up for a shot at the exhaust port. Wait for it, wait for it, not yet, NOW! I pulled the trigger and watched as my perfectly placed laser shot traveled up the screen on a direct trajectory with the flag ship exhaust port, where it would ignite a chain reaction in the core that would explode the craft into a million tiny glowing particles, and I would achieve the much sought after rank of Space Avenger!

It seemed like it took the little laser line forever to travel the length of the screen, but it got there. Just as the shot entered the exhaust port and the ship began to explode, everything went dark! The screen was dark. The lights on the game console were dark. As I looked around the room I saw that it was dark too. Then I saw the manager emerge from a back room and heard him inform us that he had thrown the circuit breaker for power to the entire arcade. That jizz waffle had stolen my valor!

I never did come that close again to Space Avenger, and I got grounded for a week for being late. How dare they ground a Space Warrior! Bet they wouldn’t have done that to a Space Avenger!

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