Centipede review: the garden that fought back

A long bug winds down the screen through a field of mushrooms. You sit at the bottom with a little shooter and a trackball, firing up into the field. Simple enough. Then you notice that the field is not the same field it was a minute ago, and that you are the one who changed it.

Every shot leaves something behind

Hit a segment of the centipede and it turns into a mushroom right where it died. Hit it in the middle and it splits it in two, each half now with its own head, both still coming. So spraying fire at the whole thing does not make the problem go away. It makes a messier field and more heads to chase.

The mushrooms matter because the centipede turns around every time it bumps into one. A crowded field brings it down toward you faster. A cleaner field buys you time. That means the smart play is often to spend shots on mushrooms instead of the bug, which is a very unusual thing for a shooting game to ask.

The board kept a record of every mistake you made, and then used it against you.

The trackball and the spider

The shooter moves with a trackball, and that is what makes the game feel so quick. A flick of the palm crosses the whole bottom of the screen. You need that speed, because the spider comes bouncing through your area in a zig zag and eats mushrooms as it goes, right where you are trying to stand.

Then a flea drops straight through, a scorpion walks across the screen and poisons every mushroom it touches, and a poisoned centipede stops weaving and dives straight down at you. None of this is random noise. Each enemy changes the field in a different way, and the game is really about reading those changes.

What it meant back then

At the mall arcade in the early eighties, the crowd around most machines was boys. Centipede was different. Its pastel colors and garden setting pulled in girls, older sisters, moms waiting for a pizza to come out of the oven, and a lot of them turned out to be very good at it. It was the machine where the high score initials did not all look like they came from the same middle school. The trackball was worn smooth on every one we ever saw, which tells you how much it got played.

Playing it today

It is still one of the most satisfying shooters to control, and it is even better once you stop chasing the head and start managing the field. Give it a few games. The moment you catch yourself shooting mushrooms on purpose, you will understand why it kept people standing there for so long.