Granny Vinnie Reviews

7800 Rank: 13th Genre Rank: (Classic Arcade) 4th Awards: 6th Best Graphics, 6th Best Interpretation You Gotta Smoke Shrooms... to See Pink Mushrooms Pros: Fast and furious gameplay/ Responsive controls/ Great 2-Player modes Cons: For classic arcade fans only That Goes For Purple, Too

Overview: Centipede is one of those Classic Arcade titles that ended up on every Atari platform. So by the time it was released, it was hard to get excited about Centipede again, but the 7800 did a great job recreating this gaming classic, whether you cared or not. Like most early Arcade games, it lends itself to the world of the bizarre. In essence, you are a guy/bug/thing that shoots bullets (that are called arrows, wow this guy is fast with a bow!) at various things in a mushroom garden. Your main target is the Centipede that meanders its way down a path of mushrooms. Once you hit a Centipede section, it magically turns into a mushroom, which acts as a barricade/bumper for the rest of the Centipede. Once all of the Centipede's sections are destroyed, background colors change, and a faster or trickier Centipede comes out on the scene. Basically you endure wave after wave of Centipede until all of your lives are extinguished. One thing you will quickly realize, is that your worst enemies are not the Centipedes, but the Spiders. If this was not a family website, I would cuss them.

Graphics: Graphics are dead on with the Arcade game. The only slight difference is the screen being wider instead of taller. All this really meant for the 7800 version and the other platforms that have carried this title is that the game is slightly tougher, since the Centipede is virtually on top of you before you can take a bite of magic mushroom.

Sound: Again, the sound is dead on to the Arcade version. There is that annoying spider jingle when he appears, the flying flea drop noise and the theme song to the scorpion. Nothing spectacular, but nothing bad.

Gameplay: Gameplay is good. I always thought Centipede was a hard game because of all of the craziness going on. In the Arcade with the track-ball, I always thought that the control you have of the shooter always felt like doom was looming just around the corner. Basically I always thought this game felt like a controlled-wreck, and the same applies here. With the purchase of an Atari Trac-ball, you can relive the Arcade madness.

Interpretation: There's probably not much to this game, since the 2600 version was a very good game as well. But the 7800 didn't do anything here to screw it up, so way to go.

Value: I think this is one of the hardest 7800 Arcade remakes. This will either entice you to play it over and over, or it will make you discard the game and rarely pick it up again. The one noticeable addition to the 7800 version that the Arcade Version did not have, is probably the best feature of the game. Honestly, it's probably the only real reason someone should have picked this version of the game up if they already owned the 2600 Centipede. The ability to play a friend simultaneously in either a competition mode or a team mode makes the game twice as fun. I like how you can blow each other up in the competition made. This transforms the game into more of a strategy mode, because you have to survive centipede, spider, flea, and scorpion attacks, but your sneaky opponent as well. This lengthens the life span of the game a bit, and can cause some arguments and fist fights with friends and relatives. Be warned.

Overall: Well, overall...this is Centipede. With the addition of the 2 player modes and the ability to play the game with an actual Trac-ball, this proves to be a great version of the game. But if you just don't care about Classic Arcade games, stay far, far away.



Other Reviews:
Video Game Critic: A
CV's Atari 7800 Panoramic Froo-Froo: 4.0 out of 5.0 (Very Good)
The Atari Times: 6 out of 10





Additional Info: I would like to take this time to thank Mitch Orman, owner of The Atari 7800 Page for allowing the use of his screenshots for this review.

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