The game fights back — Gottlieb’s 1980 Counterforce is one of the more conceptually clever machines of its era, an outer-space four-player designed by Ed Krynski where the playfield actively attacks you. Aliens, represented by drop targets, advance down the playfield row by row, threatening to destroy your green guns — which double as your bonus multiplier — in a genuine bit of strategic warfare unusual for 1980. With a confirmed run of 3,870 and Gordon Morison’s art, it’s a thinking player’s classic.
The strategy is unusually tense for a machine of this vintage. Your guns and bonus multiplier are lit by making the various green-light lanes, while the attacking aliens move down one row every few seconds — any that reach row four for too long will kill your guns and your hard-won multiplier, forcing you to relight them. Yellow targets and lanes spot your attackers, so prioritize taking out the attacks that correspond to your already-lit guns, since that bonus multiplier can easily be worth twenty thousand or more. There’s even a brilliant bit of strategic depth: if you’re sitting on a high bonus with guns about to die from flailing, the veterans seriously consider deliberately draining to bank what you’ve got. Clearing all attacks pays bonuses, with first-line completions lighting Special and tighter clears lighting extra ball.
Counterforce is a genuine outlier, a tower-defense game years before that genre had a name, all built into a 1980 Gottlieb playfield. It rewards a player who thinks about resource management and timing rather than just shooting. Defend your guns, spot your attackers, protect that multiplier, and know when to cut your losses. The aliens are relentless, but a clever commander holds the line.