Millipede is a 1982 video game. Defend yourself from hordes of larger-than-life insects. The bugs keep coming — all kinds — and the challenge continues while the intensity increases.
Although this game uses the same format and controls as Centipede, Millipede offers many extra elements that test your skill limits. You still shoot from the bottom of the screen at a field of mushrooms, but instead of battling just the original four arthropods, you now face a deadlier variety of enemy bugs: millipedes, spiders, bees, beetles, earwigs, inchworms, dragonflies, and mosquitoes. Naturally, each of these creatures has unique characteristics that must be studied. In addition, the mushrooms move up or down, and sometimes change around after a level ends.
Fortunately, there is a new feature that can be used to the player's advantage: DDT bombs. Up to four of them can appear on the playfield at any given time. Shooting one of them unleashes a deadly gas cloud that destroys any insects, flowers or mushrooms in the area.
After every few levels, a swarm of insects appears; the point value for each insect shot during the swarm increases by 100 points each time, up to 1000 points apiece.
Another feature is the option to start at a higher level of difficulty, which progresses as the player scores more points (similar to Tempest).
Millipede provides examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptation Species Change: The NES port swapped out a few of the enemies.
- Inchworm > Caterpillar.
- Earwig > Longicorn (though it looks more like a stag beetle).
- Bee > Mayfly.
- Beetle > Ladybug.
- The Artifact: The Gameboy version reverts back to using the Bee and Earwig but still refers to them with the NES version's names in the manual.
- Deadly Gas: DDT
- The '80s: The game's decade of origin.
- Every 10,000 Points: You get extra lives for every 15,000 points by default. On some machines, you can be forced to play with no point-based extra lives whatsoever; but that was impossible in Centipede.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Every bug kills you on contact, the mushrooms get in your way and send the millipede down faster (especially if poisoned), and flowers are basically mushrooms that are Immune to Bullets.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The game's main foe is the Millipede the title is named after.
- Expy: Though most of the bugs are entirely new, the Earwig and Bee have the same movement patterns and abilities as the Scorpion and Flea from Centipede. (And, of course, the Millipede itself is basically just a reskin of the Centipede)
- Immune to Bullets: If a Beetle touches a mushroom, it turns into a flower that is completely indestructible. (The spider can still eat it, though.)
- Palette Swap: As with Centipede, every Millipede you take out will cause the board to change color, until the colors repeat on Stage 13.
- Theme Tune Roll Call: The blue screen (no, not that kind) during the attract mode.note
- Zerg Rush: Any wave with bees, dragonflies, or mosquitoes mass rushing you after you destroy a Millipede.
