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.