Centipede - DOS

Game is con­trol­led by the same keys that are used to playing un­der MS DOS. For full­screen press 'Right Alt' + 'En­ter'.

If the game e­mu­la­ti­on spe­ed is low, you can try to in­cre­a­se it by re­lo­a­ding this pa­ge with­out a­ds or cho­o­se a­no­ther e­mu­la­tor from this table.

This game can be played also in a versions for Ata­ri 2600 and Ata­ri 7800. Ot­hers are coming soon.

Game size:

   Centipede is a vertically oriented shoot 'em up arcade game produced by Atari, Inc. in 1981. The game was designed by Ed Logg and Dona Bailey. The player defends against centipedes, spiders, scorpions and fleas, completing a round after eliminating the centipede that winds down the playing field.
   The player is represented by a small, 'somewhat humanoid head' at the bottom of the screen, later depicted as a caped, elf-like character on the Atari 2600, Atari 5200 and Atari 7800 cartridge graphics (though described as being a garden gnome in the trivia section of the cell phone interpretation).

Centipede (DOS)

The player moves the character about the bottom area of the screen with a trackball and fires laser shots 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; shooting one of the middle segments splits the centipede into two pieces at that point. Each piece then continues independently on its way down the board, with the first section of the rear piece becoming a new head. If the head is destroyed, the section behind it becomes the next head.
   The centipede starts at the top of the screen, traveling either left or right. 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. The player can destroy mushrooms by shooting them, but each takes four hits to destroy. Centipede-Arcade
   If the centipede reaches the bottom of the screen, it moves back and forth within the player area and one-segment 'head' centipedes are periodically added. This continues until the player has eliminated both the original centipede and all heads. When all the centipede's segments are destroyed, a new centipede forms at the top of the screen. Every time a centipede is eliminated, however, the next one is one segment shorter and is accompanied by one additional, fast-moving 'head' centipede. A player loses a life when hit by a centipede or another enemy, such as a spider or a flea, causing the game to turn any poisoned or partially damaged mushrooms back to normal whole mushrooms. Points are awarded for each one of those mushrooms after the player loses a life. The flea leaves mushrooms behind when fewer than five are in the player area, though the number required increases with level of difficulty. Spiders move across the player area in a zig-zag fashion and occasionally eat some of the mushrooms.
   Scorpions poison every mushroom they touch, but these never appear in the player's movement region. A centipede touching a poisoned mushroom hurtles straight toward the player's area. Upon reaching the player's area, the centipede returns to normal behavior.

More details about this game can be found on Wikipedia.org.

Find digital download of this game on GOG or Steam.

This ver­sion of Centipede was de­sig­ned for per­so­nal com­pu­ters with o­pe­ra­ting sys­tem MS-DOS (Mi­cro­soft Disk O­pe­ra­ting Sys­tem), which was o­pe­ra­ting sys­tem de­ve­lo­ped by Mi­cro­soft in 1981. It was the most wi­de­ly-used o­pe­ra­ting sys­tem in the first half of the 1990s. MS-DOS was sup­plied with most of the IBM com­pu­ters that pur­cha­sed a li­cen­se from Mi­cro­soft. Af­ter 1995, it was pu­s­hed out by a gra­phi­cal­ly mo­re ad­van­ced sys­tem - Win­dows and its de­ve­lop­ment was ce­a­sed in 2000. At the ti­me of its grea­test fa­me, se­ve­ral thou­sand ga­mes de­sig­ned spe­ci­fi­cal­ly for com­pu­ters with this sys­tem we­re cre­a­ted. To­day, its de­ve­lop­ment is no lon­ger con­ti­nue and for e­mu­la­tion the free DOSBox e­mu­la­tor is most of­ten used. Mo­re in­for­ma­ti­on about MS-DOS operating system can be found here.

5 different online emulators are available for Centipede. These emulators differ not only in the technology they use to emulate old games, but also in support of various game controllers, multiplayer mode, mobile phone touchscreen, emulation speed, absence or presence of embedded ads and in many other parameters. For maximum gaming enjoyment, it's important to choose the right emulator, because on each PC and in different Internet browsers, the individual emulators behave differently. The basic features of each emulator available for this game Centipede are summarized in the following table: