#0022 Centipede

This story begins every hundred years. It always begins the same way, with a legend awakening. Legends say that a multitude of armored beasts emerge from the dark core of the earth. They swarm to the surface. Drawn by their master. Every hundred years they try to overtake our world and every hundred years we always think we destroyed them. The legend also has it that every hundred years. We're wrong!

I have a lot of history with this game. See, my Mom doesn't play video games hardly at all. One of the only games, and indeed her favorite was Centipede, so it comes as no surprise that one of the first arcade games I ever played was this game. A 1980 shoot 'em up by the now legendary Atari. It was designed by Ed Logg and Dona Bailey, one of the first and only game programers working for Atari at the time. She wanted to create a game that appealed to women. She did this by using a lot of bright pastel colors, and made it much different from the shoot 'em ups of the time. This game also used a trackball controller that made maneuvering the ship easier. And they succeeded. It was the first arcade game to have a significant female player base after Pac-Man.

In this game you play as a dude (garden gnome?) in a machine called “the shooter”. Your goal is to defend the world against an onslaught of “armored beasts” such as spiders, which skitter around the screen seemingly randomly. Scorpions, who poison mushrooms, causing the centipede to go straight down at you. Fleas, which drop straight down dropping mushrooms. And their leader, a really cool alien looking centipede. The centipede snakes it's way horizontally down the screen, when it hits a mushroom or the end of the screen it goes down one notch. When you shoot the centipede in one of it's many body segments, the body segment you just shot will turn into a new mushroom and the centipede will split into two smaller centipedes, gaining speed the smaller they get. All centipedes must be killed before you can advance to the next level.

So how does this game hold up after so many years? Phenomenally. This game took the shoot 'em up genre in a direction that had never been conceived before. The mushroom mechanic along with a all the enemies working together in some way meant that the game requires more than just a quick trigger finger. To truly succeed, the game requires strategy. The increasing speed, the increasing number of mushrooms, and the heartbeat pulse “music” makes for a truly intense, panic driven game. It's one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had on an arcade, and I can see why the game is such a classic. Anyone who enjoys video games owes it to themselves to play this game.

And, with that we close out 1980. Wow, this was a good year for games. At 12 games, it demonstrates that this this truly is the golden age of arcade games. To end this year, I'd like to take a minute to look back at all the great games I've played from 1980, give some interesting stats, and do my own little “game of the year” thing. Just for fun. Now, without further adieu, here's the list of games I played from 1980:

1. Battlezone
2. Defender
3. Eamon
4. Missile Command
5. Rogue
6. Tempest
7. M.U.D.
8. Pac-Man
9. Phoenix
10. Zork I
11. Warlords
12. Centipede

Here's a graph that shows the percentage of games were made by each developer. Notice roughly 33% of the games were either made by Atari, or Indie developers

This show which genres were more popular in 1980. I think everyone was still trying to get a slice of that Space Invaders Pie even two years later.

The Arcade to PC ratio. Seems about right. No good console games were made this year.

Just to show how big the Golden age was. 1980 produced more games than every other year combined. Note, Space invaders came out in 1978.

And the award for game of the year, 1980 goes to:

Missile Command!

Missile Command tells the grim and horrific story of nuclear war, and that if nuclear war ever erupted, there would be no winners. No matter what you do you just cannot win. Video games even today rarely convey such a deep and though provoking message. If they do, it's usually in a cinematic fashion that might be better suited in a film. But here in 1980, 34 years ago, missile command not only tells a thought provoking story, but tells it purely through gameplay, with no text, and no cut scenes. Proving that not only can games deliver an amazing story, but can do it in a way that other story telling mediums cannot. Without the story, it's a great, fast paced, panic inducing shooter, but with the story, it's one of the best games I've played in a long time. And that's why it's 1980's game of the year.

To wrap things up, If there's one thing I've learned from my experience so far it would be this. If video games were people, Atari would be your 90 year old great grand father who used to do stuff, but that was well before you were born. Now he just lays in his bed while you feed him and change his diapers every day never talking about or really trying to think about him until one day you're looking through an old book about him and you discover that this 90 year old man is really Mic Jagger and all of a sudden you have a new found respect for the man.

That's how Atari is for me. I always knew Atari used to make games, but I never realized they were the Walt Disney of Arcade games. Of the 22 games I've played, 50% of them were made by Atari. Nearly every game made by them back then was a crowning gem. That's something not many game companies today can claim, and zero could claim at the time.

They have been absolutely crucial to the gaming industry and their contributions to games can still be felt even today. But unfortunately, I know how the story ends for this Goliath. And I must say that when 1983 comes, I'm going to miss Atari's presence on this list. So here's to Atari, and here's to 1980. May there be many great years to come.