Quick take: Our Centipede is a tribute to Centipede, the 1981 Atari cabinet that sent a segmented bug winding down through a field of mushrooms while you shot from the bottom of the screen.
Our Centipede is a tribute to Centipede, the 1981 Atari cabinet that sent a segmented bug winding down through a field of mushrooms while you shot from the bottom of the screen.
Co-designed by Dona Bailey, one of the very few women in arcade development at the time, it paired a fast trackball with a soft pastel palette and an approachable feel - a combination that drew a famously broad audience well beyond the usual arcade crowd. Its clever, ever-thickening maze made it one of the standout shooters of the golden age.
Centipede Fast Facts
| Original title | Centipede |
|---|---|
| Debuted | 1981, in arcades |
| Created by | Atari (USA) |
| Designers | Dona Bailey and Ed Logg |
| Genre | Fixed shooter |
| Control | Trackball aiming |
| Our tribute | Centipede |
Why Centipede Mattered
- Co-designed by Dona Bailey, one of the first women to develop arcade games, together with Ed Logg at Atari.
- A trackball glides your shooter along the bottom of the screen as a centipede snakes down through a field of mushrooms.
- Shoot a middle segment and the centipede splits in two while a new mushroom sprouts, steadily thickening the maze against you.
- Spiders, fleas and scorpions each disrupt the field in their own way, planting, poisoning or clearing mushrooms.
- Its gentle colors and easy-to-grasp play drew a notably wide audience, including many women, at a time when that was rare.
- The trackball gave it a smooth, quick feel that set it apart from the joystick shooters around it.
Centipede Timeline
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1981 | Centipede debuts in arcades and becomes one of Atari's biggest earners. |
| 1982 | Home ports reach the Atari 2600 and popular home computers. |
| 1982 | Millipede, a bigger and busier sequel, follows in arcades. |
| 1980s | Its crossover appeal makes it a touchstone for accessible arcade design. |
| 2000s | It returns through Atari collections and modern re-releases. |
Why Centipede Still Matters
Centipede has aged well because its central pressure never lets up: every shot you take reshapes the board and makes the next wave harder. Our Centipede keeps that splitting, sprouting mushroom field and its trackball-quick feel, then adds a daily seeded field every player shares and a global leaderboard - so the field is always closing in, and the only question is how long you last.
