Centipede

Not to be confused with Stampede, another Atari classic

Centipede is an arcade shooter game released by Atari in 1981. It is considered a great classic in the history of video games and it was ported to many systems since its initial release; its other most famous version, besides the original arcade one, is the Atari 2600 version.

Gameplay
In the game, you control a cannon that can move horizontally. You have to shoot a giant centipede that travels your garden horizontally from top to bottom, when it reaches a side, it scrolls down a square and moves the opposite way. The goal of the game is to achieve the maximum score possible.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Entertaining concept: you are a garden gnome that must get rid of the giant centipede and other artropods that are infesting your garden.
 * 2) Never stopping shooting action.
 * 3) Simple but addictive gameplay:
 * 4) You have to shoot every segment of the centipede to get rid of it, but every time you remove one of the segment and the centipede becomes shorter, it also becomes faster and thus more difficult to hit.
 * 5) If you hit the centipede in the middle, it splits in two and you will have to deal with two centipedes!
 * 6) In the garden there are mushrooms, if the centipede reaches a mushroom, it will go down a level and change direction. When you shoot down one of its segments, a mushroom will appear there.
 * 7) Other artropodes threat you: there are fleas that drop down vertically across the screen leaving mushrooms in their way; spiders that zig-zag in the player's area, sometimes eating mushrooms and scorpions that never enter the player's area but poison mushrooms if they make contact with them; if the centipede makes contact with a poisoned mushroom, it will speed to the player's area and then return to normal behaviour.
 * 8) Has had various ports and remakes, such as the 1998 remake, and the 2011 re-imagining Centipede: Infestation.

Trivia

 * This is one of the few games to be programmed also by a woman: Dona Bailey, who programmed it together with Ed Logg.
 * The game's arcade flyer is seen on the single art of Reptilia by The Strokes.Ataque no coração.jpg