Arcade Nostalgia: "Centipede" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Atari

Dona Bailey was one of the only female video game designers in the industry in the early 1980s, becoming interested after hearing the song "Space Invader" by The Pretenders. She left her programming position with General Motors and moved to California, taking a job with Atari, Inc.

Bailey was the software developer and software engineer on "Centipede," while Ed Logg worked on the game design. Between them, they designed a game that was a change from the usual space battle or fighting game. Sure, it was still a first-person shooter, but it wasn't quite the same. One of the other features that made it appealing to the 'other' gender was the colour scheme, which used the softer pastels.

"Centipede" ended up becoming Atari's second best selling coin-op arcade game, and it reached its goal of appealing to a wider audience, with about a 50-50 split of male to female players.

Answer: Mushrooms

The game's screen (field) had a collection of randomly placed mushrooms, and whenever the centipede ran into one, or met the end of the field (left or right side), it descended one row and turned in the opposite direction.

New mushrooms were created when you shot a segment of the centipede, and by one of the other critters, as well (to be named later).

Any newly-created mushrooms stayed in play, even when you shot every segment of the centipede, so with more and more mushroom obstacles, the centipede would descend more quickly.

The mushrooms could be cleared away, but each mushroom took four hits to be eradicated. I was usually a good idea to try to clear the mushrooms away near the bottom of the screen. They were worth one point each.

Answer: Trackball

The trackball (which is like a billiards ball embedded into the console) allowed for easy maneuvering in any direction. There was an upper limit to the range of the shooter... about 1/3 up the field, but it enabled you to avoid the centipede segments when they reached the bottom and began going back up.

You fired darts upwards from the 'Bug Blaster,' with a separate button, but it was limited to one shot at a time until it hit something, or exited the top of the screen.

Answer: True

The goal of each level was to shoot each segment of the centipede. At first, only one, long centipede appears, and hitting any segment other than the head would split the centipede into two separate parts (of varying length, depending on where you hit it), and the section without a head would suddenly have its own head.

Hitting the head directly didn't destroy the whole centipede - it just created a new mushroom (as every segment hit did), generated a NEW head, descended a level and changed direction. BUT, the head shot was worth 100 points, while the other segments (including the tail) were only 10 points each.

Once you destroyed all of the centipede's segments, a new centipede appeared at the top of the screen... one segment shorter. At the same time, a single centipede head would also appear, giving you two targets (one small, one large). The next time you would get two individual heads with the longer centipede... then the next time three... and this pattern continued until the only thing you got was a collection of individual heads. If you managed to clear that field, then it started all over again with one long centipede.

Answer: False

When the centipede managed to reach the bottom of the screen, it would begin to go back up, but it only went so far (about six 'lines' worth) before descending again, staying within the player's area.

Another complication was that more individual centipede heads would appear periodically, as long as the centipede remained in the player's area.

Answer: The flea

Fleas would spawn and descend directly from the top of the screen to the bottom, leaving a trail of mushrooms behind it. You got 200 points for killing it, as it was not very difficult to hit, but it still took two hits to kill. And once you hit it the first time, it doubled its speed of descent. You really wanted to get it sooner rather than later, to prevent too many new mushrooms (which, in turn, meant the centipede would descend more quickly).

Answer: Poisoned every mushroom in its path

Every mushroom that the scorpion touched became a 'poison' mushroom.

This had two effects: firstly, it would increase the value of the mushroom to five points; and secondly, it caused the centipede(s) to go mad when it touched one, causing it to do a nosedive straight down. This made it easier to take out a whole centipede with just a few shots, but it also brought the centipede(s) down to your level, which invariably meant having to do some nifty maneuvers to avoid losing a life.

Answer: 1200

You got 900 points when the spider was closest to you, 600 for medium distance, and 300 for further away. You still had to be careful not to be touched, which meant instant death, but the spider also had a side benefit - it would make mushrooms that it touched disappear!

Answer: Scorpion

When the scorpion appeared, it traveled from one side to the other, but it never actually came within range of your Bug Blaster, so wasn't a direct threat. The scorpion had the highest point value, worth 1,000 if you could tag it with your dart before it disappeared.

All of the other bugs could encroach upon the bottom third of the field, which was within range of your Bug Blaster, and if any of them (the centipede, the spider, or the flea) touched you, you lost a life.

Answer: 12 thousand

"Centipede" was a game that, if you were good enough, could conceivably go on indefinitely, just waiting for you to make one too many mistakes. You started the game with three lives, and earned a new one every 12,000 points. The world record, set by American Jim Schneider on August 1st, 1984, was a whopping 16,389,547 points.