''Gorgon'' is a clone of the arcade game '' Defender'', a horizontally-scrolling shooter, for the Apple II. It was programmed by

Nasir Gebelli Nasir Gebelli ( fa, ناصر جبلی, also Nasser Gebelli, born 1957) is an Iranian-American programmer and video game designer usually credited in his games as simply Nasir. Gebelli wrote Apple II games for Sirius Software, created his own co ...

and published by

Sirius Software Sirius Software was a video game publisher of Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, and VIC-20 games in the early 1980s. Sirius also developed games for the Atari 2600 which were published by 20th Century Fox Video Games. History The com ...

in June 1981.

Gameplay

In ''Gorgon'', the player flies a spaceship across a side-scrolling landscape while protecting civilians on the ground from aliens that drop down from the top of the screen to try to carry them off. The game uses keyboard controls, with the A, Z, and left/right arrow keys for movement and the space bar for firing.

Development

The graphics were drawn with Sirius's own E-Z Draw software (1980).

Reception

By June 1982, ''Gorgon'' had sold 23,000 copies, making it one of the best-selling computer games at the time. Bill Kunkel of ''

Electronic Games An electronic game is a game that uses electronics to create an interactive system with which a player can play. Video games are the most common form today, and for this reason the two terms are often used interchangeably. There are other common ...

'' called the game "another winner from ace designer Nasir" and "fine home version" of ''Defender'', only criticizing the Apple II's lack of joystick support at the time. ''

BYTE The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

'' stated that ''Gorgon'' "is well programmed and much more enjoyable than the arcade version ndshould provide many hours of enjoyment ... Rest assured that you Nasir Gebelli fans will not be disappointed by this one!"

References

{{reflist 1981 video games Apple II games Apple II-only games Horizontally scrolling shooters Sirius Software games Video game clones Video games developed in the United States Single-player video games