Centipede

Shoot the head, mind the splits

Every shot that lands in the middle of the centipede splits it into two shorter centipedes, and both halves keep coming, so blasting the body can leave you with more targets, not fewer, each free to turn and drop toward you. The cleaner kill is to pick off the head, the segment leading the descent, so the creature shortens from the front without multiplying. When it does split, deal with the piece closest to your row first; that is the one about to reach you.

Mushrooms are the real puzzle

Here is what catches people out: every segment you destroy leaves a mushroom behind, and the centipede turns and drops a row whenever it hits one. Let mushrooms pile up near the bottom and you have effectively built a staircase that funnels the centipede straight down into your zone, fast. Managing that field (shooting stray mushrooms to keep lanes open rather than letting them clutter the bottom) is the difference between a controlled wave and a sudden swarm in your face. You move along the bottom strip and fire upward, so keep drifting; a stationary shooter is an easy thing for a descending segment to land on.

• Favour head shots to shorten the centipede without splitting it.
• After a split, kill the lower half first: it is the immediate threat.
• Clear mushrooms near your row so the centipede cannot cascade straight down onto you.

Farming your field

Good players do not just react to mushrooms, they garden them. Keep the bottom three or four rows as clean as you can manage: that strip is where you live, and every mushroom in it is one more step in a staircase aimed at your face. Higher up the screen, be pickier. A mushroom off to the side costs you nothing, and shooting it wastes shots you could be putting into heads. What you never want is a tall column of mushrooms down the middle of the field, because each one bounces the snake back and forth on a shorter and shorter path toward you. So spray less. Every segment you shoot leaves a mushroom exactly where it died, which means a panicked full-body barrage high on the screen plants the very staircase you are trying to avoid. Kill heads, thin the bottom, and let the far sides stay messy. The field is a resource you are shaping, not scenery.

Waves, pace, and panic

Clearing a wave is not a finish line, it is a reset with the difficulty turned up. The next snake comes in faster, and the field you left behind is the field it plays on, which is why the moments around a wave's end are the best gardening time the game gives you. Thin the staircases you built during the scramble and tidy your bottom strip before the new snake gets low. During a wave, watch for the moment the snake commits to one side of the screen. That is your window to slide under its path and line up head shots as it comes down, instead of chasing it sideways and pumping shots into body segments out of frustration. Panic fire is the real killer here. Every wasted shot plants a mushroom somewhere you did not choose, and ten seconds of spraying can undo a whole wave of careful field work.

A landmark of arcade design

Centipede arrived from Atari in 1981 and stood out for two reasons. It was one of the first major arcade games co-designed by a woman, Dona Bailey, working alongside veteran designer Ed Logg, and its softer colours and garden-creature theme drew a wider audience than the space shooters of the day. The original cabinet was played with a trackball, which suited the fast side-to-side scrambling, and the arcade screen was busier than this one: a spider zigzagged around the bottom eating mushrooms, and a flea rained new ones down whenever the field got thin. This version strips it back to the duel that matters, you against the snake and the field you are both reshaping. The design has aged well because it hides a management game inside a shooter: the mushrooms you create while defending yourself are the same ones that can bury you. Clear each wave and a faster one takes its place: the pressure never stops, it only accelerates.