Centipede, 1983 Atari/Josh Littlefield/David W. Payne (20 From Atari 2600 #3)
8Great port of the arcade classic featuring a fantasy world full of giant bugs and mushrooms! Control a gun at the bottom third of the screen and mow down all the critters that seek to end your endeavors. These include the titular arthropod, which will split into separate bodies when shot. Mushrooms basically serve to make the centipede drop a level and reverse direction. You can destroy the mushrooms with four shots each, but this yields only one point! However, you can make the mushrooms-- which the centipede parts turn into when shot-- work for you if you line them up right, making the centipede descend quickly with columns of 'shrooms to maneuver between and you can hold down rapid-fire to mow them down in a hurry. If you take too long to finish off the centipede's last few parts or so, more will be created and enter the playfield. The centipede can descend all the way to the bottom and destroy your gun, so being nimble with the joystick (or the much more preferable trakball controller) is key.. as is keeping the sides of the screen relatively free of mushrooms. Other critters to contend with: The spider, which bounces around your area (and doesn't reverse course) from one edge of the screen to the other, destroying mushrooms and is worth multiples of 300 up to 900, depending how far away they are from you. Also, the flea will appear if you've taken out many mushrooms in your area, and zips straight down vertically and is worth 200 points. The scorpion will appear on very rare occasions and is worth a whopping 1,000 points-- he zips across the screen horizontally and will poison mushrooms he touches. These poisoned mushrooms will make a centipede PLUMMET down the screen when it touches one, and can be a blessing (if you're ready with the rapid fire to mow down a kamikaze 'pede) or a curse (it moves pretty fast and you may not be ready for it!). An extra life is granted every 10,000 points. This port is magnificent-- the graphics are a bit watered down with the mushrooms only represented by dashes and your cannon is a stick-- but the gameplay and sound effects are a knockout! And I totally dig the attract mode wiggling centipede at the title screen! Created by Josh Littlefield and David W. Payne.