[atari 2600]

Now's your chance to show me up and score some booty (a post of a greater score wins you two discs mailed to your continental U.S. address) in the process.

 

 

 

 

[floatingslowly]

ok. I'll give it a go when I get home.

I hope that this isn't near as difficult as Robotron was.

.....if only I had a trackball.

PS: am I blind or is there no link to the game?

[atari 2600]

Yeah, I didn't post a link. All of the flash versions are exceedingly difficult to play by moving the mouse around on a tiny screen. And Robotron is much, much harder than this game. Centipede is more-or-less a one-trick pony in comparison.

If you wish to play (I'm glad someone does), the best thing to do is download two very small files.
The free MAME emulator is at

http://www.romnation.net/srv/emulators/mame.html

and the free Centipede rom is at

http://www.romnation.net/srv/roms/55644/mame103/Centipede-revision-3.html

My copy of the game is the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator rom. It has the same dip switches as the original game. One can alter gameplay in two significant ways with the Atari dip switch on this game. One can increase your number of starting men from three to five. I'll be honest, I did that. One can also decrease the score required to earn an extra man from 12,000 down to 10,000. I didn't do that, and the .png screenshots I posted reflect this.
Unfortunately, the rom (revision 3 listed at romnation is the same one I have from years ago) is not set up for use with a trackball. You can use arrow keys or the mouse to move around.

Originally Posted by wiki

Strategies

Several strategies were subsequently developed to circumvent the normal play of the game, leading to scores in excess of one million points and games lasting several hours.
One popular strategy, the "blob," involves deliberately filling the rows immediately above the shooter with a field of mushrooms, thereby neutralizing the disruptive effect of the fleas. Clearing the screen of mushrooms above the blob greatly slows the descent of the centipede, allowing the player to amass points by hunting spiders.
A second successful strategy is the "trap," whereby the player creates a mushroom trap one column from the edge of the screen and strategically deposits mushrooms at the second, fourth, and sixth rows, creating a trap for the centipede. The player can then rack up points indefinitely by defending the trap from spiders.

World record scores

Eric Ginner of Mountain View, CA, was the first Centipede champion, winning the 1981 Atari National Championships, held in Chicago, 10/18/81. By the end of '82, both Darren Olsen of Calgary, AB, and Billy Mitchell, of Hollywood, FL, had attained over 25 million points on Centipede, primarily using the "trap" technique of play.
To verify differences in gameplay, the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard divided Centipede gameplay into two categories: Marathon (using the trap, the blob and other tricks) and Tournament (using no tricks, just constantly firing -- commonly called the "shoot-em-up" method.)
Today, only submissions on Tournament play are accepted. The world record for Tournament play now stands at 7,111,111 points, achieved by Donald Hayes of Salem, NH, on 11/05/00 at the Funspot Family Fun Ctr. in Weirs Beach, NH. The feat took approximately 9 hours of non-stop play on one quarter. On 2/05/01, Hayes was honored by his local City Hall for his accomplishment.

If I can manage to learn the "trap" method, I feel confident that I could get up into the millions on this game. All I've done is use the "blob" method.


blob method in action

 

[floatingslowly]

thanks. I've been meaning to download some sort of MAME, but I never got around to it.

although, I have to tell you.....Pitfall 2 is now calling my name. I hope I have time for Centipede.

[atari 2600]

No, you must play now! haha

I suck at Pitfall, Pitfall 2, Jungle Hunt, pretty much all of those...mainly because I've never tried to play them well and take them seriously.

Unfortunately, the rom (revision 3 listed at romnation is the same one I have from years ago) is not set up for use with a trackball. You can use arrow keys or the mouse to move around.

Originally Posted by wiki

It is regarded as the first arcade game created by a woman, Dona Bailey, who programmed the game along with Ed Logg. It was also the first arcade coin-operated game to have a significant female player base.

[PAULYBEE2656]

fuckin great game!

[floatingslowly]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

No, you must play now! haha

I promise, I'll play it before I play Pitfall.


your wiki quote reminds me of when I went looking for a copy of the game M.U.L.E. (still wish I had it).

M.U.L.E. was my favorite game on the C:64, but instead of reading about it, I ended up following links about it's creator Dan Bunten.

turns out, Dan became Danielle at some point in h(is)/(er) life. (s)he somewhat recently died of cancer, but honestly, the saddest part of the tale is the following quote:

Originally Posted by wiki

Bunten claimed Sid Meier talked him into doing Axis and Allies (which became 1990's Command HQ, a modem/network World War II game), while Meier did Civilization, which went on to become one of the best-selling computer games of all time.

a serious D'OH! moment. Sid made out rather well from it though...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Bunten_Berry

[atari 2600]

You can play the Atari version of M.U.L.E. online:

http://atarimule.neotechgaming.com/

Wow, the creator of M.U.L.E. got a sex change... wild & wacky stuff.

Commodore 64 emulator

http://www.romnation.net/srv/emulators/commodore64.html

I wasn't able to locate any free C-64 roms for M.U.L.E. though, only the music for the game.

[floatingslowly]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

You can play the Atari version of M.U.L.E. online:

http://atarimule.neotechgaming.com/

damn man, I owe you for that one.

I never thought to look for an atari version (I'm guessing that was on the 5200). I have some serious gaming to do tonite....


and yeah that stuff about Bunten is weird. I didn't even wiki the name until I came across stuff on M.U.L.E. that listed Dan and Danielle separately. it's all just really sad.

[atari 2600]

I thought you might be extra happy for participating in this thread seeing that link.

[pbradley]

whuts wiht all this lane old gay stuf, i will tottally pwn u at HALO cuz Im harcore mastur chief vet d00d lololololololol

*slits wrists for the betterment of humanity*

[floatingslowly]

if that's the case, this is me playing M.U.L.E.:

 

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by pbradley

whuts wiht all this lane old gay stuf, i will tottally pwn u at HALO cuz Im harcore mastur chief vet d00d lololololololol

*slits wrists for the betterment of humanity*

If you ask me, Halo and the like are not worth my time.

I like X-Wing vs. T.I.E. Fighter (great flight sim) and Madden once in a blue moon, that's about it.

The new doc coming out rates Donkey Kong as the king of all videogames for unequaled sheer hand-eye & timing toughness. I disagree. Although Donkey Kong is no stroll through the park (there are some patterns, albeit complex ones), I think the original Defender by Williams Electronics is the toughest game ever. Stargate, the second installment, is faster and has more enemies that make it more challenging in some respects, but Stargate also has an Inviso function that, if mastered, will get you a long way; and you can potentially rack up lots of points with the bonuses from using the Stargate itself with four rescued humanoids in tow.
Other especially tough arcade games include Robotron:2084 & Donkey Kong, Jr.

[thewall91]

i accidentally bought a centipede standup game on ebay - one of my first experiences using ebay. i was like "$300? no way!!!" there were like two minutes to go. i kept upping it $50 just to see what the reserve was. i ended up buying it for 550. without telling my husband. after the shipping and everything it came to almost $1,000. he was none too pleased when we had to get it up four flights of stairs. anyway, i don't play games on line, but i'm confident that i'd give you a good run for your money on the real thing. we sold it when we changed apartments. millipede is really where it's at, though.

[floatingslowly]

there's a hell of a learning curve on this damn thing. I'm not even talking about the game, I'm talking about the MAME!!

I finally got it to attempt to play the ROM, but it keeps saying that certain files are missing (and they are not).

spent the better part of the hour trying to get it to go, and I guess I'm just not really the computer nerd I thought that I was. [/]

hopefully I'll get it figured out soon. if not, I'll be forced to play WoW...

 

Originally Posted by thewall91

i accidentally bought a centipede standup game on ebay - one of my first experiences using ebay. i was like "$300? no way!!!" there were like two minutes to go. i kept upping it $50 just to see what the reserve was. i ended up buying it for 550. without telling my husband. after the shipping and everything it came to almost $1,000. he was none too pleased when we had to get it up four flights of stairs. anyway, i don't play games on line, but i'm confident that i'd give you a good run for your money on the real thing. we sold it when we changed apartments. millipede is really where it's at, though.

post of the week.

[pbradley]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

I like X-Wing vs. T.I.E. Fighter (great flight sim) and Madden once in a blue moon, that's about it.

I remember playing TIE Fighter before the versus version was released. That was fun, too. Hard, but fun.

[atari 2600]

oh gosh, this sounds like when Hip Priest tried. I use MacMAME for a Mac, so I've never set-up a PC version of MAME before. The roms are the same for both versions. There's no need to unzip the rom file. I can only assume that the Windows version works somewhat similarly.

Is there an error that you are missing a plug-in or system extension maybe?

You should be able to download the rom and put the .zip inside the roms folder of MAME and then start the game. '5' and '6' add credits and '1' or '2' starts the game. 'Tab' and '`' brings up menus and control options.

I've downloaded roms from that site and they usually, but not always, work.

For instance, I know Joust 2 works from that site.

I'll have to download the emulator for PC and see what's up tomorrow.

---

I've never tried to get good at Millipede. It's always kicked my ass. I have the Super Centipede game too that was in limited release with Super Missile Command under a coin-op title called "Arcade Classics" by Atari.

[floatingslowly]

it starts to load (from C: prompt I type MAME Centipede) but then it errors out and says that it's missing files. I copied the files into every folder of the MAME program but it always does the same thing.

it has to be loading some of it, because the files that are missing start with 7.

IE: centiped07, centiped08, etc.

[atari 2600]

http://www.badongo.com/file/4203934

centiped1.zip

&

http://www.badongo.com/file/4203958

centiped.zip (revision 3)


These links are for a centipede rom that I know works. I included both versions I have on my machine because I think you may need the original to make revision 3 work perhaps. I don't mean to cause you any extra grief, but if this rom doesn't work with the emulator, then there is some sort of problem with the emulator.

There are a bunch of different emulators for windows listed at

http://www.romnation.net/srv/emulators/mame.html
I'm wondering which one you've tried and thinking some of them may be better or more operative than others or something.

[floatingslowly]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

There are a bunch of different emulators for windows listed at

http://www.romnation.net/srv/emulators/mame.html

I'm wondering which one you've tried and thinking some of them may be better or more operative than others or something.

that's where I went. there were so many I just had to pick one. I'm at work now and not even sure which one I got. any suggestions for XP?