Centipedes, spiders and fleas invade your garden of 'shrooms. Spiders follow an evasive course and can collide with you at any moment. Fleas poison the mushrooms, making them impervious to your fire (and thus giving the centipede impenetrable cover). And the centipede itself can split into many segments, and if it reaches the bottom of the screen, will turn around and start to move upward again, possibly catching you from behind. Every time you manage to completely "debug" the screen, you move up to a harder level. (Atari, 1982)

Centipede was a huge arcade hit, so it's no wonder Atari wasted no time in creating the home translation. Though the Atari 2600 version of the game couldn't compete with its arcade ancestor's colorful graphics, the home version did get the point across. It was also an excellent game to play with either Wico or Atari's trakball controllers instead of a joystick.

Atari later turned Centipede's sequel, Millipede, into a 2600 cartridge as well.

Rating:  Three quarters - worth repeat play, but with some annoying features that might alienate less patient arcade veterans.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster