I'm not sure how many times I've played Centipede, but in the last couple months I've been playing it again in the Atari 50 package. I wanted to at least get back to where I was regularly hitting another credit and topping the default leaderboard. It's kinda nice to once again be confident that I could put my initials up on a machine that gets restarted every night.
Centipede is an excellent early arcade game. I think that some of the ways that it uses randomness are probably still textbook today, or at least they should be. The way the board becomes increasingly dense in interactions between the player and the centipedes is a good way for complexity to emerge. The fun, as I see it, is in managing that complexity for as long as possible. The additional obstacles of jumping spiders and dive-bombing beetles that further gum up the works also require more on-the-fly adjustments.
It's a well-designed game that's just tricky enough to reward repeated attempts as players get to grips with the strategy of it. I can't see myself wanting to truly master it, but I understand how it could get its hooks in.
Centipede is an excellent early arcade game. I think that some of the ways that it uses randomness are probably still textbook today, or at least they should be. The way the board becomes increasingly dense in interactions between the player and the centipedes is a good way for complexity to emerge. The fun, as I see it, is in managing that complexity for as long as possible. The additional obstacles of jumping spiders and dive-bombing beetles that further gum up the works also require more on-the-fly adjustments.
It's a well-designed game that's just tricky enough to reward repeated attempts as players get to grips with the strategy of it. I can't see myself wanting to truly master it, but I understand how it could get its hooks in.