Arcade Classic 2: Centipede / Millipede

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story | gameplay | thoughts |
level structure | controls | options | credits

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BASIC INFO:
Title ....... Arcade Classic 2: Centipede / Millipede (North America)
Players ..... 1-2
Genre ....... shooter
Subgenre .... vertically oriented shoot 'em up
Platform .... Game Boy (1995)

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STORY:
Bugs are ransacking your mushroom garden.

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GAMEPLAY:
These are slightly modified ports of the original 1980 (Centipede) and 1982 (Millipede) Atari arcade games. How much is modified, I cannot say--I don't remember playing the original arcade versions. I rather suspect the main difference is the addition of a 2-player mode in Millipede and three 2-player modes in Centipede (alternate, compete, and team).

Centipede and Millipede are remarkably similar games. In both games, you control a canister of pesticide and are tasked with protecting your mushroom garden from various invasive pests. Your minimalist screen is dotted with mushrooms, a centipede (or millipede), and various other creepy-crawly themed enemies. Because bugs are so totally gross, you must avoid touching any of them, lest you lose a life. Fortunately, you can move your canister freely around the bottom 1/3 of the vertically-oriented screen (that is, across the entire width, as well as up and down 1/3 of the height of the screen).

The titular centipede is made of 9 segments (the millipede is made of 10, and gets larger as levels progress). Each segment must be destroyed individually. If you destroy a middle segment, you will in effect create two independently moving centipedes (millipedes) as the estranged segment will create a head from one of its existing segments. Just like in real life.

The 'pede spawns at the top of the screen and moves to the left or right and, upon hitting a wall or normal mushroom, it drops down a row and switches directions. Upon reaching the bottom of the screen, it will start to move back up, but it will never leave the player area. If you fiddle-fart around, letting a 'pede stay in the player area too long, 1-segment 'pedes will be added to the player area until they kill you or you kill them.

In Centipede, other enemies include spiders, fleas, and scorpions. Spiders move across the player area in a zig-zag pattern, eating mushrooms as they go. Fleas drop straight down from the top of the screen, quickly, planting mushrooms as they go. Scorpions move horizontally across the screen, slowly, and poison any mushrooms they touch; when a centipede touches a poisoned mushroom, it will move straight down to the player area.

In Millipede, other enemies include spiders, earwigs, bees, dragonflies, inchworms, beetles, and mosquitos. The spider works the same as it did in Centipede, although there are more of them on the screen at a single time. The earwigs and bees work just like Centipede's scorpion and fleas, respectively. Dragonflies move about in a zigzag pattern, leaving mushrooms in their wake; inchworms move rapidly across the screen but will slow enemies if you manage to shoot them; beetles go straight to the player area to be annoying and, if left alive, will turn mushrooms into indestructible dandelions; and mosquitos will bounce around annoyingly and, if shot, will move everything up a row.

There are two more notable elements in Millipede. First, the screen scrolls. When you kill a millipede, everything on the screen scrolls down a row. This is handy for getting rid of dandelions and poisoned mushrooms. It also gives you a steady supply of the other notable element, the DDT item, which scrolls in from the top of the screen. If you shoot a box of DDT, a cloud will appear that kills any enemy or mushroom caught in it. It sticks around for a few seconds, so you might have an entire millipede walk into it.

There are a few more quirks to the play of these games, but that about covers the essentials.

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THOUGHTS:
I think these 2 games hold up surprisingly well. I can still get 5 to 30 minutes of play from them, trying to do just a little better than last time. I prefer Centipede over Millipede--even though Millipede should theoretically be more interesting due to having more elements, Centipede has that sort of Tetris-like simplicity that lends to a sort of meditative play.

However, the Game Boy ports are...well, not the best. Better to play the official browser version (Centipede, Millipede) or any of the various ports to Nintendo, Sony, Sega, or Apple handhelds.

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LEVEL STRUCTURE:
When you destroy an entire centipede (or millipede), you proceed to the next level. As levels progress, more enemies spawn, enemies move faster, and centipedes (or millipedes) spawn with more heads. In millipede, every few levels you are preiodically treated to a "bonus round" of sorts, where you are faced with a swarm of non-millipede enemies. You can score many points here, if you don't get killed.

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CONTROLS:
D-pad .... move cursor or pesticide can (both games); choose difficulty level (Centipede only; only when menu is available); change score (Millipede only, only when menu is available)
select ... choose difficulty level (Centipede only; only when menu is available)
start .... confirm menu choice (both games)
A ........ spray pesticide (both games)
B ........ spray pesticide (both games)

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OPTIONS:
Centipede: Before starting a game, you can choose your difficulty from novice (start on level 1), standard (10), advanced (19), or expert (28).
Millipede: Before starting a game, you can change the number of points you start off with (between 0 and 100k, in intervals of 10k). This effects what level you start off on. You can start off as high as level 20 (100k points) or as low as level 1 (0 points). Furthermore, if you score higher than 100k points, when you restart a game, you can start off near that score.

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Breakthru!

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story | gameplay | thoughts |
level structure | controls | options

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BASIC INFO:
Title ....... Breakthru! (North America)
Players ..... 1-2
Genre ....... puzzle
Sub-genre ... falling tile, matching tile, tile removal
Platform .... DOS (1994), Game Boy (1995), SEGA Saturn (1995), SNES (1994) and Windows 3.x (1994)

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STORY:
None.

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GAMEPLAY:
Your goal in Breakthru! is to remove all tiles from the playing field. You begin with a screen that is filled with tiles. There are regular tiles which can be differentiated by pattern (as the Game Boy was monochromatic). You can remove these tiles by clicking on any group of them, even if the group is composed of only 2. When removed, tiles from above fall down, creating new groups that can be removed.

You may have played this before under the name ChainShot! or SameGame. If you have, you'll know it can get very difficult to destroy the last few tiles. Thus, it is helpful that new tiles are constantly falling from the top of the screen. You can force drop these pieces by holding down B and pressing down on the D-pad; you can also position them by holding down B and pressing left or right on the D-pad.

To make it even easier, you have special tiles. These include:

• wild cards: allow you to destroy all tiles of one type (rare)
• rockets: flies in 1 direction and destroys all tiles in its flight path
• bombs: You can choose to detonate any bomb that reaches the bottom row of the playing field. It will destroy every adjacent tile, including diagonally adjacent tiles. If a bomb is one of those diagonally adjacent tiles, it, too, will detonate, following the same rules. If two bombs ever actually touch (diagonals not included) they will automatically detonate.

Another special tile is included whose only purpose is to make things difficult. This is the weight, an obnoxious tile that can only be destroyed by rockets and bombs. Weights must be destroyed in order to proceed to the next stage.

There are also spiders. These are not tiles, and do not need to be destroyed in order to clear a stage. However, they can be destroyed by special tiles such as rockets or bombs. You may want to do this as spiders get in the way of your falling blocks, making it difficult to clear the field.

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THOUGHTS:
First things first: if you have full color vision, you probably would prefer a different version of Breakthru!. The monochrome version of the game really tires your eyes out. Unfortunately, the color versions I've seen screenshots for (SNES, Windows 3.x) are not color-blind friendly.

As for the game itself, well...how do you like your SameGame? Personally, I prefer that my falling block puzzles be endless, so Breakthru! is an improvement over the original SameGame rules, where your puzzle ends as soon as you clear or fail to clear the field. However, I think I may prefer the more classic "endless" SameGame rules variant, described on Wikipedia as such:

"In an "endless" variant, the game starts with an empty field. The blocks or balls start falling down; but if they reach the top, new blocks stop falling, so they do not overflow—thus, the game never ends. The player can end the game at any time by waiting for blocks to reach the top, then performing a special action (for example, right-click instead of left-click)."

On the other hand, I really do like the introduction of special tiles and the spider. These really do change the game in an interesting way, motivating me to plot out my moves in a way the regular game doesn't.

I think, in the end, I'd like to see a reintroduction of Breakthru with a combination of the gameplay from the Game Boy game and the "endless" gameplay described in the above quote. As the player reaches a certain score point, special tiles would generate at different rates (weights becoming more common, for instance), and spiders would spawn where a tile just disappeared.

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LEVEL STRUCTURE:
[world #] [level NAME] [round #]

There are 4 "worlds" (for lack of a better term). The first level of every world is called Berlin. In Berlin (as in each of the 6 levels) you play 4 rounds. After you complete the 4th round, you get a "Level Complete" message and move onto the next level. The levels are, in order: Berlin, London, S.F., Moscow, N.Y., and Beijing. There are 98 total rounds on any single difficulty level.

Upon beating 4 Beijing 4, you loop back around to 4 Berlin 1.

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CONTROLS:

D-pad ... move cursor; (while holding B) position falling puzzle tiles

select .. none

start ... pause or unpause

A ....... press on tiles to make them disappear (regular tiles in groups) or to detonate them (rockets, bombs)

B ....... toggles control from the puzzle playing field to control of the falling tiles; must HOLD B down in order to move the falling tiles

A + B ... press simultaneously to place a partial grid on the playing field to help you place falling tiles

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OPTIONS:
There are 3 difficulty settings (easy, normal, hard). There are 3 time settings (2, 5, and 10 minutes). Music can be toggled on and off. Sound effects can be toggled on and off. The puzzle background can be toggled on and off (fortunate, because it is very distracting. Credits can be accessed at any time from the options menu.

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