Centipede is a fixed-screen shooter from Atari, Inc., released on the Atari 2600 in 1980. You control a bug blaster at the bottom of the screen and fire upward at a segmented centipede winding down through a mushroom field. Clear every segment to advance to the next wave.
How to Play
Move left and right across the lower zone and shoot the centipede one segment at a time. Each segment you destroy turns into a mushroom, adding to the obstacles on the field. Shooting the head makes the next segment take over as a new head โ so one centipede can fracture into several independent ones. Three other enemies appear as the waves progress: fleas drop mushrooms rapidly down the center column, spiders bounce through the lower third destroying mushrooms and scoring bonus points, and scorpions run across the screen poisoning every mushroom they touch. When the centipede crosses a poisoned mushroom, it rushes straight down to the bottom instead of winding.
Keyboard controls (Player 1): arrow keys to move, Spacebar to fire, Del for turbo fire. Player 2 uses T/G/F/H to move and A to fire. Alt+P to pause, F12 to reset, F11 for game select, Alt+L to toggle paddle and joystick mode.
Tips
- Target the head first. Every time you kill the leading segment, the next one becomes a new head โ dispatching heads quickly keeps the number of independent centipedes manageable.
- Clear mushrooms from your lower zone. A packed mushroom field near the bottom leaves the centipede nowhere to travel before it reaches you, and the spider only removes a few on its own.
- Shoot scorpion-poisoned mushrooms before the centipede reaches them. A centipede crossing a poisoned mushroom immediately beelines to the bottom โ hard to dodge and easy to avoid by clearing it first.
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