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Recently I talked about Frogger 2, a modernization of a golden age arcade game that was surprisingly fun. Sadly, this blog post will not be doing the same.

In late 1999, Atari thought that the classic Centipede needed a modern 3D facelift. And what they came up with was the imaginatively titled game, Centipede. I guess I'll start by saying something nice about this modern piece of crap: it has great music. Really. The soundtrack is very good. It's the kind of soundtrack you could listen to outside the game -- or at least wish was in a better game.

But wait, I'm getting a bit ahead myself. Like usual, let me tell you my background with Centipede (the original game) to give you some perspective. Centipede is one of those games I have fond memories of playing on cocktail cabs in various restaurant waiting areas in my youth. Disclaimer: it's never been a game I was good at. But I've always respected it. Truth be told, as far as shooters of the era go, I'm pretty much a steady-Galaga guy in the sense that I can't find much else to compare. But I do think that Centipede is unique, twitch-enducing and fun at least in small bursts. One might assume that in modernizing such a classic, Atari would bring it into a more current "bullet hell" atmosphere. But no. Instead they threw in various power-ups and incorporated horrible 3D graphics and managed to suck pretty much all the fun out of the game proper.


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This new take on the Centipede formula turns the game into a free roaming experience. Whereas the original game was obviously inspired by the Space Invaders style vertical view -- meaning you're at the bottom killing stuff at the top -- this game lets you go wherever you want. It even lets you choose your view, including a cumbersome over-the-shoulder viewpoint. This alone pretty much kills the game. Where you would originally see the entire board at once, and move freely within a few "steps" of the bottom of the board, now you can freely traverse the environment. This means that now everything is zoomed in and  you're only seeing little bits at a time. This device creates and incredibly cramped feeling and you generally find yourself sticking to small parts of the map which becomes incredibly boring incredibly quickly.

In fairness, Atari tried to make things unique here. They included aforementioned power-ups and all, but none of it feels needed. It's really just a bland take on the already established and refined formula. It's genuinely not something I could recommend anyone looking to expand their Dreamcast collection.


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The disc does have one small saving grace however. While I lamented that the Frogger 2 release didn't include an emulation of Frogger, this new Centipede does indeed offer the original version of Centipede. This will indeed offer far more enjoyment over the remake. In fact it makes me wish that there had been a trackball accessory released for the Dreamcast as it could have been hell-of-a-lot of fun to play this game again like on that cocktail cab. Sad but true -- if you pick this game up you'll spend far more time playing the 30-year game than this new iteration.

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