Centipede Chaos (Arcade)

With the limited floor space available at an arcade, a question arises: do you keep classic games people expect to find at an arcade, or do you draw in repeat visits by frequently introducing new but less proven arcade machines? Centipede Chaos tries to get the best of both worlds though, this reinvention of the 1981 arcade classic Centipede introducing new ideas but not straying too far from the original format so that it provides something novel but still familiar.

Centipede Chaos can be played by up to three players simultaneously who control a small attack craft using only a joystick and a fire button, the cabinet quite nicely providing a button on either side of the joystick to not alienate players based on handedness or preference. The goal of Centipede Chaos is to wipe out all the centipedes that appear during a level, the various arthropods that appear during the battle rendered in forms consisting of colored cubes to evoke a nostalgic similarity to the pixelated original while still having a 3D appearance. The centipedes aren’t technically aggressive but are dangerous, the player’s gun blowing up the moment it makes contact with them or any other bugs or their attacks, but three lives per credit does give you a cushion so the action doesn’t come to an end too quickly. The centipedes will constantly be trying to head to the bottom of the screen but can only move down a row when they make contact with something, this including the edge of the screen or the many mushrooms that appear when a stage begins.

When a centipede is shot, it’s body will split at the point of impact, one segment successfully eliminated but now two creatures will be running around in its place. At the same time, a destroyed body piece will become a toadstool itself, meaning that the play field quickly will become filled with small centipedes that are moving down towards the player after they bounce off the fungi that used to be body segments. If the creature does make it to the very bottom of the screen though, you aren’t doomed as it will lurch back up a few rows and then repeat its descent, and since you can move your bug blaster anywhere you like on the screen, the centipedes often aren’t too much of a concern themselves. You’ll still want to blast some mushrooms to make their movement manageable as things can get a bit too crowded otherwise, but another benefit to killing centipedes comes from the fact that doing so makes progress because the longer you linger in a level, the more likely the really threatening bugs might make contact with you.

While the centipedes in Centipede Chaos are the targets, the danger primarily comes from the insects and arachnids that appear to try and stop you. Wasps will fly in and follow your blaster about, their tracking not perfect so you can outmaneuver them but you’ll need room to do so, thus making clearing out long centipedes and mushroom clusters early in waves that features wasps fairly important. Jumping spiders don’t actively track the player, but the speed with which they spring up and down across the play field makes them foes you really need to watch to avoid accidentally bumping into one and you might not always have a good opportunity to shoot them down. There are a few less oppressive threats, ants coming in small groups and just marching across the play field and fireflies doing something similar as they take a diagonal path across it, but these bugs do get their day as getting into the later waves of Centipede Chaos will cause the numbers and speed of enemies to increase. Having your movement limited by these swarms of simpler foes while the dangerous wasps and spiders more actively threaten you ensures that the action starts to get rather intense, but your movement and the power of your weapon to wipe out any normal bug in one shot still keeps things from getting out of hand.

Wildly firing does feel like an effective enough strategy at first, even the rapid segmentation of the centipedes not too dangerous if done without much thought, but eventually blast beetles enter the picture, explosive bugs who slowly crawl towards your position and will detonate the moment you hit them with a shot. You can use the blast to your advantage to harm other bugs, but once the explosive beetles enter the picture it becomes more important to watch your shots and make greater use of your free movement. Already the wasps were a fairly good way of getting you to sometimes leave the relative safety of the bottom part of the screen and it does remain the safest space because bugs usually enter from the upper areas, but Centipede Chaos becomes more exciting when you’re trying to weave through all the incoming threats to survive. If you can wipe out all the centipedes in a stage though, you only need to survive until the remaining hostile enemies leave and you can move onto the next level, meaning you can sometimes choose to prioritize safety over shooting down foes depending on how threatening the remaining enemies seem.

You do have some ways to turn the tables even in the later waves thanks to power-ups. The weapons play pretty smartly into that free movement, often appearing higher up on the play field so the player has to ask themselves if they wish to risk their safety for a strong reward. With the battlefield often packed with active threats and mushrooms that box in escape options it is a judgment call with some weight, but if you can grab them, they can be pretty effective at quickly reducing centipedes to nothing, blasting through mushrooms, or more easily dispatching the boss monsters. Scatter gives you a shot that spreads into three differently angled bullets, usually a boon save if explosive beetles are on the prowl. Shock and Beam are a bit similar, both firing long shots up through enemies to deal constant quick damage, Shock also damaging things near the point of impact while Beam focuses on a consistent line of pure power. Lastly, Bomb is an explosive shot that expands on Shock’s concept, the attacks much slower but also hitting a wide area from the point of impact to help clear out centipede parts or fungi fairly quickly. Power-ups last until you’ve used them up so you can pick your moments if need be, but they’re often a fairly simple power trip without much need to worry about what you’re shooting once you’ve taken the risk of diving in to grab them.

The different levels of Centipede Chaos will have some mushrooms appear at the start of the stage and there is a less common flea enemy that will drop down and place extra ones in a column if not killed quickly, but every few stages a fungi-free level begins where there aren’t even any centipedes to shoot. Instead, a giant boss bug will appear based on one of the other enemy types you’ve gone up against. The wasp, firefly, and beetle all contain giant variants that have a few attacks, the wasp preferring dive bombs over player tracking for example but this challenges the fact that you need to be positioned beneath it to hurt it, thus meaning you need to weave in and out quickly to avoid being destroyed. The firefly now sends out shockwaves so a lot more of the battlefield can’t be safely lingered in, but more importantly all three boss types have back up from their standard versions. The wasp boss is definitely made more difficult when a bunch of little wasps all try to fly towards you while you’re searching for your openings and the blast beetle boss’s fairly predictable movement style is made up for by having its little minions threatening to crowd you out.

Things culminate in an even bigger battle at every tenth level though, the Mega Spider Boss ignoring how many lives you have as you only get one shot at killing it. If you do die you will be allowed to continue (provided the arcade cabinet has that setting enabled) and Centipede Chaos even lets you add more credits to continue through normal stages to eventually reach this boss, and there is something thrilling about the present danger of knowing you need to play perfectly or else you’ll need to run through again to get another opportunity. The Spider Boss fires spiderwebs and does a charge attack, but at lower health it gets a trick where it will sidestep after its charge to try and catch players who linger too close by surprise, ensuring it is a bit more of an interesting fight than just moving left or right when it rears up to attack. The bosses all telegraph their attacks to make the fights pretty fair, and whether you’re playing the points-based or ticket-focused versions of the cabinet, you’ll still get a huge payout if you can manage to take down the Mega Spider Boss successfully just to add a bit more satisfaction to this well-framed battle.

Centipede Chaos doesn’t have to end with the Mega Spider Boss though, as even though it will start repeating the ten waves afterwards, they’re not exactly the same. The mushrooms patterns will be reused, but more enemies will pop up and they will be mixed together differently, this being the point where fireflies and ants can really start to come in dangerous formations. The normal bosses are all given new forms as well, the Brutal Beetle and Poison Wasp variants adding new elements like increased boss speed to make them tougher to take down. These changes aren’t too drastic but they do give you a reason to keep going after the Mega Spider Boss even if you aren’t seeking a rematch with it necessarily, and with that rise in difficulty some things like the actual centipedes get to present a greater danger since it’s not as easy to focus them down with fire when there are other concerns in play.

THE VERDICT: While Centipede Chaos doesn’t have the same focus on trying to control the state of the play field like the arcade classic it is based on, it does give the game an energetic reimagining that zeroes on in fast battles with the various enemy bugs. Bouncing spiders and pursuing wasps keep you active while other creatures like the fireflies deny space, the player needing to balance their goal of taking down the centipedes before they get out of control with clearing away the more pressing threats. Power-ups do simplify this some, but boss battles provide some interesting shifts in action with the Mega Spider Boss’s framing especially effective at making the battles feel electrifying.

And so, I give Centipede Chaos for arcade machines…

A GOOD rating. Centipede Chaos doesn’t play exactly like the original, and that’s perfectly fine. You’re not focused on a persistent battlefield here, the game instead built around speedy skirmishes where even having three players working together at once doesn’t necessarily invalidate the dangers you’re dealing with. Movement space is at a premium, whether it’s about getting to the power-ups that will simplify the bug blasting or having the room you need to avoid threats like the wasp, and with only a forward firing laser you can’t always manage every incoming threat until you’ve effectively maneuvered around a battle space filled with other concerns. The centipedes are perhaps a bit weak compared to their allies, the free movement of the player and the little rebound the centipedes perform when they get too low removing some of the pressure they’re meant to apply, but their back-up is sufficient in providing the danger and it’s not like the centipedes are entirely toothless thanks to their constant splitting and dropping of mushroom blockades. This is a game where the arcade operator’s settings can deny you some of the interesting elements like continuing on to the harder stages but even a first push through to reach the Mega Spider Boss still packs enough punch and demands enough quick movement to survive. The normal bosses could perhaps be a bit more complex to start with though, but the smart idea of having back-up from tinier bugs keeps them from being too easy once you realize their tells.

Centipede Chaos doesn’t really replace the 1981 Centipede but does evoke enough of its ideas while also transplanting them into something fast-paced and visually exciting, a well-built bridge between paying homage to classics and appealing to the bright and flashy features of an arcade meant to have broader appeal. You need good reflexes to weave around the enemies and choosing which bugs to pick off can be important to ensuring you have the space you need to survive, the game working both on its own gameplay merits and as a solid way to earn tickets just to further its effective approach of catering to many types of players and arcade owners.