Centipede (video game)

Centipede
Promotional flyer, showcasing the arcade cabinets used for the title
Developer(s) Atari, Inc.
Publisher(s) Atari, Inc.
Atarisoft
Superior Software (BBC)
Namco(Japan)
Designer(s) Ed Logg
Dona Bailey
Programmer(s) Dona Bailey Edit this on Wikidata
Platform(s) Arcade, Apple II, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari 8-bit, BBC Micro, ColecoVision, C64, IBM PC, Intellivision, TI-99/4A, VIC-20
Release Arcade
June 1981
Atari 2600
Atari 5200
Atari 7800
Genre(s) Fixed shooter
Mode(s) Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Cabinet Upright, cocktail
CPU 1x MOS Technology 6502 @ 1.512 MHz
Sound 1x Atari POKEY @ 1.512 MHz
Display Raster, 240×256, vertical orientation, palette colors 16

Centipede is a vertically oriented fixed shooter arcade game produced by Atari, Inc. in June 1981.[1] The game was designed by Ed Logg and Dona Bailey. It was one of the most commercially successful games from the video arcade's golden age. The player fights off centipedes, spiders, scorpions and fleas, completing a round after eliminating the centipede that winds down the playing field.

Centipede was ported to Atari's own Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, and Atari 8-bit family. Under the Atarisoft label, the game was sold for the Apple II, Commodore 64, ColecoVision, VIC-20, IBM PC (as a PC booter), Intellivision, and TI-99/4A. Superior Software published the port for the BBC Micro.

Gameplay

Screenshot of Centipede's gameplay

The player is represented by a small, "somewhat humanoid head"[2] at the bottom of the screen, later depicted as a caped, elf-like character on the Atari 2600, Atari 5200 and Atari 7800 cartridge graphics (though described as being a garden gnome in the trivia section of the cell phone interpretation). The player moves the character about the bottom area of the screen with a trackball and fires laser shots at a centipede advancing from the top of the screen down through a field of mushrooms. Shooting any section of the centipede creates a mushroom; shooting one of the middle segments splits the centipede into two pieces at that point. Each piece then continues independently on its way down the board, with the first section of the rear piece becoming a new head. If the head is destroyed, the section behind it becomes the next head.

The centipede starts at the top of the screen, traveling either left or right. When it hits a mushroom or the edge of the screen, it drops one level and switches direction. Thus, more mushrooms on the screen cause the centipede to descend more rapidly. The player can destroy mushrooms by shooting them, but each takes four hits to destroy.

Arcade machine

If the centipede reaches the bottom of the screen, it moves back and forth within the player area and one-segment "head" centipedes are periodically added. This continues until the player has eliminated both the original centipede and all heads. When all the centipede's segments are destroyed, a new centipede forms at the top of the screen. Every time a centipede is eliminated, however, the next one is one segment shorter and is accompanied by one additional, fast-moving "head" centipede.

The player is also menaced by other creatures besides the centipedes. Fleas drop vertically, leaving additional mushrooms in their path; they appear when fewer than five mushrooms are in the player movement area, though the number required increases with level of difficulty. Spiders move across the player area in a zig-zag fashion and occasionally eat some of the mushrooms. Scorpions move horizontally across the screen and poison every mushroom they touch, but these never appear in the player movement region. A centipede touching a poisoned mushroom hurtles straight down toward the player area, then returns to normal behavior upon reaching it.

A player loses a life when hit by a centipede or another enemy, such as a spider or a flea, after which any poisoned or partially damaged mushrooms revert to normal. Points are awarded for each regenerated mushroom. A game ends if all lives are gone.

Scoring

  • Mushrooms: 1 (destroyed) or 5 points (regenerating upon losing life).
  • Centipede: 10 (body) or 100 points (head).
  • Fleas: 200 points.
  • Spiders: 300, 600, or 900 points, depending how close the player shoots it.
  • Scorpions: 1,000 points.

Players earn extra lives per 10,000, 12,000, 15,000, or 20,000 points scored. May have up to 6 lives. 999,999 points is the maximum high score.

Development

Ed Logg and Dona Bailey developed Centipede for Atari.[3] Logg, a supervisor, said that he did the design, while Bailey did about half of the programming.[4] Bailey was one of the few female game programmers in the industry.[5] Logg stated that the game was intended to attract women players; he believed that its design was not biased by gender, unlike a fighting or sports game. Bailey said "I really like pastels ... I really wanted it to look different, to be visually arresting".[6][4] They succeeded; Centipede was one of the first arcade coin-operated games to have a significant female player base.[7] How to Win Video Games (1982) estimated that half of its players and 60% of Pac-Man's were women, while 95% of Defender players were men.[8]

Reception

Cartridge for Atari 8-bit computers (1982)

In 1983 Softline readers named Centipede ninth on the magazine's Top Thirty list of Atari 8-bit programs by popularity.[9] The game received the award for "1984 Best Computer Action Game" at the 5th annual Arkie Awards where the judges described it as "pack[ing] a real roundhouse punch", and suggested that some "insist that [the Centipede] Atari cartridge is the best home-arcade edition you can buy".[10]:28 David H. Ahl of Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games said that the Atari 5200 version was "delightful fun".[11]

In a 1984 Video review of the Apple II version of the game, Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz commented that "the graphic limits of the Apple crimp the style," and expressed disappointment in the game's "sluggish" interfacing with trackball controllers.[12]

In 1996, Next Generation listed the arcade version as number 84 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", praising the cool concept, trackball control, and that it is accessible enough that "any human on the planet can play it well enough to enjoy it" yet "hard enough that even excellent gamers find it challenging."[13]

Legacy

Re-releases

Sequels and remakes

Centipede was followed by Millipede in 1982, a somewhat less successful arcade game. In 1992, Atari Games developed a prototype of an arcade game called Arcade Classics for their 20th anniversary, which includes Missile Command 2 and Super Centipede with co-op 2-player mode.[16]

A 3D fantasy role-playing game based on the original game was being developed by Dark Science and planned to be published for the Atari Jaguar under the working title Centipede 2000 as part of a series of arcade game updates for the systems by Atari Corporation, but work on the project was stopped by Atari Corp. six months later due to marketing executives at the company deciding that remaking classic Atari titles was not in their interest before they discontinued the Jaguar and merged with JT Storage in 1996, while the source code of the project no longer exists,[17][18] with the only remaining proof of its existence being a short video clip of the in-game engine created for it that was provided by the developer.[19]

In 1998, Hasbro-owned Atari Interactive released a new version of the game for the PC, PlayStation, and Dreamcast. This version looks and plays very differently from the original game, with free movement around the map, 3D graphics, and a campaign which can be played in single-player or multiplayer mode. The original version of Centipede is available in this version, with slightly updated graphics. The computer version of Centipede's 1998 remake sold 176,713 units and earned $2.22 million from January through October 2000 in North America, according to PC Data.[20]

In 2011, Centipede: Infestation was released for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii. This was a more story-driven remake that was set in a post-apocalyptic world and is played from a top-down perspective. It also makes use of motion controls, such as using the Wii Remote pointer to determine which direction to shoot, or the 3DS touchscreen to quickly change weapons. Players can also grow plants that can assist them in battle.

Clones

The Centipede concept was widely cloned, especially for home systems.

Arcade clones

  • War of the Bugs or Monsterous Manouvers in a Mushroom Maze, by Food and Fun Corp./Armenia Ltd in 1981[21]
  • Jackler, by Konami in 1982[22]
  • Slither, by GDI in 1982 and ported to ColecoVision[23]

Home system clones

Board games

In 1983, Milton Bradley released a board game based on the video game. The board game pits two players against each other in a race to be the first person to the opponent's home base with a centipede. Each player can utilize a blaster, as well as a scorpion and spider, to slow the opposing centipede's advance.[38]

In March 2017, IDW Publishing announced that a new board game based on Centipede was in development. The game will be co-developed by Jon Gilmour and Cardboard Fortress Games, and is scheduled to be released in Fall 2017.[39]

Competitive arena

The game was chosen for the final round of the 1981 Atari World Championships run by Tournament Games International. The men's champion was Eric Ginner and the women's champion was Ok-Soo Han.[40]

The world record score on the arcade version of Centipede was 16,389,547 points by Jim Schneider of the USA on August 1, 1984.[41]

Donald Hayes of Windham, New Hampshire, USA, scored a world record 7,111,111 points under tournament rules on the arcade version of Centipede on November 5, 2000.[42][43]

In other media

In 1989, a deadpan narration describing the original game appeared on side 2 of Negativland's third cassette release, The Weatherman (SSTC902), which consisted of clips from the live Over the Edge radio show sometime between 1982 and 1984. The narrator may be Ed Logg.[44]

American Indie Rock band The Strokes featured the promotional artwork for the game on their 2003 single, Reptilia.

Centipede was featured on the first episode of Halt and Catch Fire when Cameron Howe plays at a dive bar.

Centipede appears in the film Pixels.[45]

In May 2016, It was announced that Emmett/Furla/Oasis Films has closed a deal to partner with Atari to produce and finance both Centipede and Missile Command.[46]

In the Samurai Jack episode 'Jack is naked', the underground city is serviced by a network of centipede trains which are revealed in a runaway train sequence to be controlled by a trackball.

References

  1. ↑ https://atari.com/history/arcadecoin-op
  2. ↑ "Centipede Operation, Maintenance, and Service Manual". Sunnyvale, California: Atari, Inc. 1981: 13. TM-182
  3. ↑ Ortutay, Barbara (June 30, 2012). "Dona Bailey, a rare female programmer in Atari's early days, recalls birth of 'Centipede'". VancouverDesi.com. Associated Press / DesiWireFeed. Archived from the original on October 9, 2012. Retrieved July 15, 2012.
  4. 1 2 Rouse, Richard III (2010). "Chapter 6: Interview: Ed Logg". Game Design: Theory and Practice. Jones & Bartlett Learning. pp. 93–94. ISBN 9781449633455.
  5. ↑ Burnham, Van (2001). Supercade: a visual history of the videogame age 1971-1984. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 220. ISBN 0-262-02492-6.
  6. ↑ Krueger, Anne (March 1983). "Welcome to the Club". Video Games. p. 51. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
  7. ↑ Kent, Steven (2001). from Pong to Pokémon and beyond: The Ultimate History of Video Games: the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world. Roseville, California: Prima Publishing. pp. 160–162. ISBN 0-7615-3643-4.
  8. ↑ How to Win Video Games. Pocket Books. 1982. pp. 83–84, 87. ISBN 0-671-45841-8.
  9. ↑ "The Most Popular Atari Program Ever". Softline. March 1983. p. 44. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  10. ↑ Kunkel, Bill; Katz, Arnie (February 1984). "Arcade Alley: The 1984 Arcade Awards, Part II". Video. Vol. 7 no. 11. Reese Communications. pp. 28–29. ISSN 0147-8907.
  11. ↑ Ahl, David H. (Spring 1983). "Atari 5200 Advanced Game System". Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games. p. 46.
  12. ↑ Kunkel, Bill; Katz, Arnie (March 1984). "Arcade Alley: We Still Want Action". Video. Vol. 7 no. 12. Reese Communications. p. 23. ISSN 0147-8907.
  13. ↑ "Top 100 Games of All Time". Next Generation. No. 21. Imagine Media. September 1996. p. 43.
  14. ↑
  15. ↑ "glu games - Centipede". Web.archive.org. 2007-10-06. Archived from the original on 2007-10-06. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
  16. ↑ "Arcade Classics Videogame by Atari Games (1992) - The International Arcade Museum and the KLOV". Arcade-museum.com. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
  17. ↑ Willard (May 4, 2003). "Centipede 2000". AtariAge. Retrieved 2018-09-22.
  18. ↑ Reutter, Hans. "Unreleased Or Unfinished Jaguar Games - Centipede 2000 (working title)". cyberroach.com. Retrieved 2018-09-22.
  19. ↑ Jean La Montarde (January 24, 2014). Centipede 2000 for Atari Jaguar - Engine demo. YouTube.
  20. ↑ Asher, Mark; Chick, Tom. "The Year's Ten Best-Selling Games". Quarter to Three. Archived from the original on February 2, 2001. Retrieved May 27, 2018.
  21. ↑ "War Of The Bugs Videogame by Food and Fun Corp./Armenia Ltd. (1981) - The International Arcade Museum and the KLOV". Arcade-museum.com. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
  22. ↑ "Jackler Videogame by Konami (1982) - The International Arcade Museum and the KLOV". Arcade-museum.com. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
  23. ↑ Classic Game Room reviews COLECOVISION ROLLER CONTROLLER (YouTube) (YouTube). Lord Karnage. 2008. Event occurs at 4:45. Retrieved April 2, 2014.
  24. ↑ "Bio and Gameography of Jim Nitchals (Bug Attack, Microwave, Teleport...)". Game Designers Remembered.
  25. ↑ http://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=http%3A//www.lemon64.com/games/list.php%3Fpublisher%3DAlligata+Software
  26. ↑ "Bug Off!". Atari Mania.
  27. 1 2 "Home Computer Games: TRS-80 Color Computer Games". Atarimagazines.com. 2008-04-25. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
  28. ↑ "Caterpillar (Dave Edson)". Nitros9.lcurtisboyle.com. Archived from the original on 2011-01-23. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
  29. ↑ "Centi-Bug". World of Spectrum.
  30. ↑ "Katerpillar Attack". Nitros9.lcurtisboyle.com. Archived from the original on 2010-12-29. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
  31. ↑ "Dragon Software Library". Dragon-it.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
  32. ↑ "Megalegs". Atari Mania.
  33. ↑ "Megapede". Nitros9.lcurtisboyle.com. Archived from the original on 2010-11-30. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
  34. ↑ "VIC-20 Cartridge Software Reviews". Zimmers.net. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
  35. ↑ Boyle, L. Curtis. "Wiggle Worm". The Tandy Color Computers Game List.
  36. ↑ "COMPUTE!'s Gazette Index, page 1". Atarimagazines.com. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
  37. ↑ "CHAMP Centipede-em". The CHAMP Games Fan Page.
  38. ↑ "Centipede: The Board Game". SydLexia.com. Retrieved 7 April 2017.
  39. ↑ "IDW Games Announces Atari Partnership". IDW Publishing. 8 March 2017. Retrieved 7 April 2017.
  40. ↑ 1981 Atari World Championships History
  41. ↑ Twin Galaxies Centipede Rankings
  42. ↑ "Guinness World Records 2008 - Gamer's Edition", page 240
  43. ↑ "Welcome to Twin Galaxies". Twingalaxies.com. Archived from the original on 2010-12-01. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
  44. ↑ Negativland, The Weatherman. Cassette only, SST Records SSTC902. Negativland Discography at The Skeptic Tank.
  45. ↑ "Classic video game characters unite via film 'Pixels'". Philstar. July 23, 2014. Retrieved July 23, 2014.
  46. ↑ Fleming, Jr, Mike (May 12, 2016). "Atari Classic Arcade Games Centipede & Missile Command Headed For Big Screen". Deadline.
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