C E N T I P E D E
by J. Robinson Wheeler
The true story of Centipede, revealed. This game is famously believed
to be impossible to win; this is almost true. If you wait until you
are cued, you will not have time to take all the actions necessary to
beat the game.
But to get a feel for the game, you should really play it through once
or twice just to see how it goes. Centipede really shines in that
everything is extremely tightly timed, but even screwing everything up
weaves the failures into the continuing ongoing narrative. This
capability is really quite unique, and Centipede pushes it to its
logical extreme. Centipede *greatly* rewards replay and
experimentation.
But you're not reading a walkthrough because you want to experiment,
you're reading it because you want to win. OK. Let's start by
humoring our squadmate:
> X HOLOVID
> PUSH ZIPPER
Well, there's no accounting for taste, I suppose. In any case. To
business: we need to activate the parachutes when Chub orders us to.
> UP
> X PANEL
> X SUIT
> X CHUB
> X DUGGERS
> X MITCHUM
Chub hasn't ordered us to do this *yet*, but we won't have time to do
it when she does order us, because the ship will sink too fast. So
we'll just claim that we're interpreting Chub's sudden bout of
swearing as our cue to call for help from the Defender.
> LAUNCH BEACON
> FLIP DISTRESS
... and that's our cue:
> PULL LEVER
Chub knows what she's talking about; follow your orders.
> STRAP IN
> X BACKPACK
> X BELT
> X CHARLENE
> STAND
> OUT
> STAND
> STAND
> CLEAN FACEPLATE
> OPEN BACKPACK
> X STIMS
> X LETTER
And we are cleared to fire! Actually, from this point on you might
want to try playing honestly. There's still one genuine puzzle left
at this point, and you probably didn't reach it when you were playing
around before.
> SHOOT CENTIPEDE
> SHOOT CENTIPEDE
> SHOOT CENTIPEDE
> SHOOT CENTIPEDE
> SHOOT TICK
> SHOOT TICK
> SHOOT TICK
One down. Two lives remaining.
> SHOOT CENTIPEDE
> SHOOT MUSHROOMS
> SHOOT TICK
> SHOOT TICK
> SHOOT CENTIPEDE
> SHOOT CENTIPEDE
Last life! Fortunately, that's you.
> SHOOT CENTIPEDE
> SHOOT CENTIPEDE
> SHOOT CENTIPEDE
> SHOOT MUSHROOMS
> SHOOT TICK
> SHOOT CENTIPEDE
A rescue ladder! Good thing we sent out that distress call. However,
what with our bad arm and everything, we can't actually climb the
ladder fast enough to save ourselves from the oncoming tick. Our suit
is too heavy. Fortunately, that's easy enough to fix:
> REMOVE SUIT
> UP
> UP
> UP
This walkthrough ends up getting you a little over half the maximum
possible points.
A somewhat lower scoring ending can be reached via rampant drug abuse:
> TAKE STIMS
> UP
> UP
Quite a score hit. Just like all the arcade cabinets said: Winners
Don't Use Drugs.
And that's the walkthrough. Wheeler himself said that he considers it
"one of [his] best works, although because it came bundled
(anonymously) inside the "IF-Arcade" pack of games, it didn't get much
attention during the awards season 14 months later." It does deserve
a good deal of attention, though, as its "story daemon" approach is
one of the boldest structural experiments out there.
