The primary objective is to shoot all the segments of a centipede that winds down the playing field. Centipede is a 1981 fixed shooter video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for arcades.

The Story Behind Centipede

A licensed version of the original cabinet is used in arcades in the video game Planet Coaster 2. Versions for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color were also produced, as well as a version for the short-lived Game.com. Under the Atarisoft label, the game was sold for the Apple II, Commodore 64, ColecoVision, VIC-20, IBM PC (as a self-booting disk), Intellivision, and TI-99/4A.

In 1998, a 3D remake for Windows, Mac, PlayStation, and Dreamcast was published by Hasbro Interactive. I really wanted it to look different, to be visually arresting". Logg, a supervisor, said that he did the design, while Bailey did about half of the programming.

How Centipede Plays

The initial centipede is 10 or 12 segments long, including the head; each successive centipede is one segment shorter and accompanied by one detached, faster-moving head. When all the centipede's segments are destroyed, another one enters from the top of the screen. This continues until the player has eliminated both the original centipede and all heads.

Scorpions are also worth the most points of all enemies with 1,000 points each. Each piece then continues independently on its way down the screen, with the rear piece sprouting its own head. An extra life is awarded every 12,000 points.

Why Players Still Load It Up

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". In 1995, Flux magazine ranked the arcade version 15th on their "Top 100 Video Games". How to Win Video Games (1982) estimated that half of its players and 60% of Pac-Mans were women, while 95% of Defender players were men.

It was one of the first coin-operated arcade video games to have a significant female player base. 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". A 1982 Games review of the 5200 version of the game stated that it is a faithful and satisfactory port of the arcade version, despite hardware limitations leading to a decrease in the amount of mushroom obstacles and a lack of trackball controls.

Centipede — Frequently Asked Questions