Friendly Centipede competition?

[rancidvariable]

I just recently started playing centipede on MAME using a trackball and figured I would check around and see if anyone else was still playing this and what kinda scores people are getting. I think i'm doing alright and improving quickly so though maybe a bit of friendly competition would be fun.

 

Post your high scores here if you're interested or feel free to share some tips if you have any.

 

My current high score is 53,500

[VectorGamer]

Check out the scores posted here

http://www.retrocademagazine.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=1284

[rancidvariable]

283,127 o_o

 

Better get practicing!

[+wongojack]

I Chose to dig this thread rather than start my own. I've just decided that I need to really try to get better at Centipede, so I've been playing it ALOT lately on my MAME cab with a hackball I made out of a GoldenTee plug n play. I was hoping to dig up more "tips." I checked the HSC and saw that my scores really aren't all that bad. I usually land somewhere in the 40k range and my high right now is just over 50k. I find that my highest point games come when it rains fleas and I can keep up with shooting them. This also prevents the scorpion from appearing who I find difficult to deal with. The drawback of that strategy is the sheer amount of mushrooms that gather, and when the scorpion does finally come out, you can't get a shot at him or his "leavings."

 

Here are some tips I've discovered:

 

The flea will continue to drop if there are less than five mushrooms in the area the spider can explore (The spider can navigate a few rows more than you)

The spider reappears 4 seconds after being shot, 2 seconds after escaping on its own to the left or right of the screen

Once a segment reaches the bottom row, a new segment will appear 5 seconds later in the player zone. The time decreases for new segments to appear (down to 1) until you shoot all of the segments or you die.

Keeping a mushroom immediately on one side of you will protect you from stray centipede segments

 

Apparently you can "trap" the centipede on the side of the screen and farm the insects. I haven't researched that as it doesn't sound like very much fun.

 

Has anyone been able to predict the spider's movement pattern?

[Rhomaios]

Thanks for the tips, wongo!

 

283,127 o_o

 

Better get practicing!

I see local scores doubling that easily. I don't even bother looking to get high scores anymore, it's just too insane how good some of the experts are.

[Cynicaster]

I Chose to dig this thread rather than start my own. I've just decided that I need to really try to get better at Centipede, so I've been playing it ALOT lately on my MAME cab with a hackball I made out of a GoldenTee plug n play. I was hoping to dig up more "tips." I checked the HSC and saw that my scores really aren't all that bad. I usually land somewhere in the 40k range and my high right now is just over 50k. I find that my highest point games come when it rains fleas and I can keep up with shooting them. This also prevents the scorpion from appearing who I find difficult to deal with. The drawback of that strategy is the sheer amount of mushrooms that gather, and when the scorpion does finally come out, you can't get a shot at him or his "leavings."

 

Here are some tips I've discovered:

 

The flea will continue to drop if there are less than five mushrooms in the area the spider can explore (The spider can navigate a few rows more than you)

The spider reappears 4 seconds after being shot, 2 seconds after escaping on its own to the left or right of the screen

Once a segment reaches the bottom row, a new segment will appear 5 seconds later in the player zone. The time decreases for new segments to appear (down to 1) until you shoot all of the segments or you die.

Keeping a mushroom immediately on one side of you will protect you from stray centipede segments

 

Apparently you can "trap" the centipede on the side of the screen and farm the insects. I haven't researched that as it doesn't sound like very much fun.

 

Has anyone been able to predict the spider's movement pattern?

I really enjoy Centipede, but for me it's one of those arcade games where I don't feel like I get any better at it no matter how long I try, so it's kind of frustrating and discouraging. Maybe I should just dig in one weekend and play it for hours straight to see what I can do, but so far my high is hovering around 50k.

 

I find that, on average, I tend to score higher on the real arcade cabinet with its smaller trackball. Not sure why, just something I've noticed.

 

As for the spider, I'm pretty sure its movements are coded to be random and therefore unpredictable, kind of like the firefoxes and fireballs in Donkey Kong. The one thing you can take to the bank is that a single spider will only move either right-to-left or left-to-right, never both. He will stop periodically and "bounce" up and down, but he will never reverse horizontal direction. This is handy, because you know that as soon as the spider "passes" you, you have a few seconds of free reign on his trailing side to focus on the centipede.

[+wongojack]

Yeah, I'm never really sure what makes it so that I score higher. Seems like the configuration of the mushrooms has a lot to do with success. I haven't been able to figure out how to manipulate that yet, but this guy did:

 

I think most of us have noticed that if you can get the Centipede to travel down a single tunnel that it is easier to shoot. The guy in that video creates a tunnel rather quickly by consistently shooting at the thousands position of the score above the playfield. Since the Centipede emerges at the same position each time, this lets you steadily build a tunnel around this position which seems to be the safest position to fire from to avoid the spider. He also talks about the technique to shoot the centipede from the back end which is a known way to avoid it coming right down on your head. As I suspected, if you want to really push your score high, you've got to avoid shooting the flea. The flea adds too many mushrooms to the screen too quickly. But for us mortals around the 50k range, the flea shootin might still be a solid strategy.

 

Another observation - The levels in Centipede are distinguished by the number of segments that start separated from the main body. Level 1 has 0 segments (or maybe it's level 0) while level 2 has 1, level 3 has 2. On odd numbered levels, the main segment and the single segments move at the same speed (fast). On even numbered levels, the main segment moves much slower than the singles. This means that if you can take out the singles, you have a slow main body to deal with and can build up points while it works its way down. However, if you reduce the main body to a single segment, it will increase it's speed.

 

I don't think that I've ever seen the scorpion before level 4. I'll pay closer attention to that and test if it is true.

 

There seems to be no points increase as the levels increase. Am I right about that? If so, then it is worth it to try and make the earliest levels last as long as possible to score points when the game is not quite as frantic.