Centipede
Atari - 1980
The player moves the character about the bottom area of the screen and shoots at a centipede advancing from the top of the screen down through a field of mushrooms. Shooting any section of the centipede creates a mushroom.
The centipede starts out at the top of the screen, When it hits a mushroom, or the edge of the screen, it drops one level and switches direction. Thus, more mushrooms on the screen cause the centipede to descend more rapidly.
Centipede was designed by Ed Logg and Dona Bailey and was one of the first to feature a track-ball controller. It was the also the first arcade game to be co-designed by a woman. Its colorful graphics and good game play made Centipede the first video game to be more popular with women than with men.
Centipede was followed by Millipede in 1982, a somewhat less successful, though respectable, game.
In 1982, Buckner and Garcia recorded a song called "Ode to a Centipede", using sound effects from the game, and released it on the album Pac-Man Fever.
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