Centipede (video game)
Centipede is a 1980 arcade game by Atari. It was one of the more popular arcade games of the entire 1980s.The player is represented by a small character at the bottom of the screen, looking something like an insect head. The player moves the character about the bottom area of the screen with a trackball and fires projectiles (something like laser shots) at an advancing centipede. The centipede advances from the top of the screen down through a field of mushrooms. Shooting the centipede's head creates another mushroom; shooting a body segment creates another centipede. If the centipede reaches the bottom of the area—the "player area"—it moves back and forth within it, adding segments that move within the player zone when it reaches the bottom of the screen. When it reaches the bottom of the screen, it heads back up to the top of the player area. A player loses a life when hit by a centipede or another enemy.
Other enemies pop up at various times throuhgout the game, such as spiders, fleas and scorpions.
Centipede was followed by Millipede in 1982, a somewhat less successful, though respectable, game.
This game, like many other Atari arcade games, was ported to the Atari 2600 for home play.Legacy
