Trying to remember a centipede like game, cannot find

[sup8pdct]

Back in the day, I had a game that played like centipede except it was better. I thought it was called myraped but only versions i can find are not the one. Also not millipede.

From what i remember, (memory is scratchy) it loaded in basic, and when ran, created machine code and ran it. I thought i read about it somewhere that the guy who wrote sent to atari but they rejected it because it was better then their own.

 

Can someone point me in the right direction?

 

James

[+Larry]

I'll take a look through my ATR's. I know that I had it, but I remember it a little differently. My recollection was that it was OK, but ran pretty slow. Got it in 1982 at our user group meeting.

 

-Larry

[sup8pdct]

Have looked through my ATR,s but only found ones by L Dyer. Not the version i remember.

Do remember the sound was pure tones, farily sure there wasn't any of the pokey distortions if you know what i mean.

 

James

[Bob The Bug]

Myriapede?

[ACML]

Not Megalegs?

Megalegs.XEX

Edited July 1, 2017 by ACML

[+Larry]

Have looked through my ATR,s but only found ones by L Dyer. Not the version i remember.

Do remember the sound was pure tones, farily sure there wasn't any of the pokey distortions if you know what i mean.

 

James

 

The version I remember was Myriapede (although shortened for the game title). In my "wisdom" I archived the disks where this game may be as DCM's on DD 720K disks. This will take a bit, but it should be on the first several DD disks. I don't remember about the sounds.

-Larry

[+DrVenkman]

Have looked through my ATR,s but only found ones by L Dyer. Not the version i remember.

Do remember the sound was pure tones, farily sure there wasn't any of the pokey distortions if you know what i mean.

 

James

 

Landon Dyer was the teenager who wrote Myriapede, submitted it to Atari and got rejected because it was too much like Centipede, but then got an offer to fly out for a job interview. He ended up working for them for 4 or 5 years, wrote the A8 version of Donkey Kong, Super Pac-Man (unreleased) and chunks of the ST operating system stuff. According to his very long-running blog, he's also worked at Apple, Microsoft and Valve over the years.

Myriapede v1.1 (1982)(Landon Dyer)(PD)k-file.atr

[+Larry]

Glad you had it and found it. I'm having trouble un-DISCOMMing my disks using Imagic!

 

Whew! Pressure's off! And yes, that's the version that I remember

 

-Larry

[Bryan]

First thing I thought of was Serpentine.

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-serpentine_6595.html

 

Not quite like Centipede, though.

[+therealbountybob]

Perhaps it's one of the ones we played in the HSC's Millipede Madness round in season 10?

[ACML]

 

Landon Dyer was the teenager who wrote Myriapede, submitted it to Atari and got rejected because it was too much like Centipede, but then got an offer to fly out for a job interview. He ended up working for them for 4 or 5 years, wrote the A8 version of Donkey Kong, Super Pac-Man (unreleased) and chunks of the ST operating system stuff. According to his very long-running blog, he's also worked at Apple, Microsoft and Valve over the years.

Is there a way to extract the XEX file off the k-file format?

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

 

the k-file ATR images are mostly created with a program named "MakeATR" or "ATR-Util" both by Ken Siders, you can reverse that with "UnmakeATR" (MS-DOS/16Bit program) or with "ATR-Util" also by Ken Siders (Win 95/98/2k/XP program, runs fine with Win XP 32 bit, unsure if it runs under Win 64 Bit)...

 

http://atari.kensclassics.org/a8emulators.html

 

MakeATR and UnmakeATR can be found under Emulator-Utilities (at the bottom of the A8 emulators page) and there under Ken's ATR/DCM DOS utilities; ATR Util can also be found there as ATR Util 95 1.13 (think I have a newer version from 1999)...

[+Roydea6]

 

 

And extract the EXE rename XEX --- READY

 

If you can search the Forums it is in here CALLED AtrUtil

 

 

[+CharlieChaplin]

Think you already found the Centipede clone you were looking for.

On the other hand, you can also search for certain game genres at Atarimania, e.g. "Shoot em up - Centipede" and get these results:

 

http://www.atarimania.com/list_games_atari-400-800-xl-xe-shoot-em-up-centipede_genre_109_8_G.html

 

This works for other game genres too (but of course the Atarimania game list is not always complete and lacks to mention some games, but it is a good start)...

[sup8pdct]

Not Megalegs?

Megalegs.XEX

Turns out it is. Dug deeper through unmarked disks and found filename myraped.Loaded it and Megalegs name scrolled across the screen.

Appears some one unknown in back in the day didn't name the file properly. Also needed basic in etc.

 

James

[ACML]

Well, here is the XEX version of Myriapecde.

 

Myriapede.xex

 

 

[landondyer]

 

Landon Dyer was the teenager who wrote Myriapede,

 

Hey, I was a little older than that. I think I reached legal drinking age in Maryland before I finished that game :-)

 

Looking back on it, it's a mess. The colors suck pretty hard. There are bad animation artifacts on the centipede segments. The segments interact in awful ways that are pretty much guaranteed to wipe the player out no matter what they do (I claim that it's also possible to get unavoidably wedged by barrels in DK, since a lot of their movement is random and with no guarantee of survivability, though it doesn't happen too often and it always looks like the player's fault).

 

I remember being really depressed when Atari sent me the rejection letter for the game. Like, crawl-under-the-bed-for-a-while depressed. I stuck the "public domain" notice on the title page, found a user group meeting in the DC area, gave a quick demo of the game and said "Here you go, have fun." I guess it all spread from there.

 

Glad you liked it :-)

[re-atari]

I guess it's slightly off-topic, but there's an interview on Youtube with Dona Bailey, Centipede's original creator/programmer.

 

Check it out at:

 

 

re-atari

 

[+toddtmw]

Not Megalegs?

 

Megalegs.XEX

Ah megalegs! I played that one a lot when I was younger.