Centipede

Centipede arrived on the Game Boy Color in 2000 as another in the series of ports of classic Atari arcade machines prepared for the handheld by studio Digital Eclipse. The player controls a small character moving around the bottom part of a screen covered with a field of mushrooms, and its task is to destroy a long centipede crawling from top to bottom through the mushrooms before it reaches it. Every hit on the centipede's body splits it into two shorter parts, which gradually speeds up the game and fills the screen with more enemy segments at once, until the single long creature turns into a jagged tangle of smaller sections heading in different directions.

Besides the centipede itself, the player must also deal with spiders, fleas, and scorpions, each of which has its own movement pattern and changes the layout of the mushrooms on the field. Firing at the mushrooms gradually wears them down, changing the battlefield over the course of a single game, which gives the title a slightly different character even after many playthroughs. The controls remain simple - movement in all directions and a single fire button - but the interplay of speed, precision, and the ability to read the enemies' chaotic movement makes it a surprisingly demanding test of reflexes.

The color treatment on the GBC gave the mushroom field and the enemies more vivid shades than the original arcade machine had, without disrupting the readability of the hectic action on the small screen. Centipede was never a title that lured players in with story or atmosphere, but as a quick arcade interlude for a few minutes, it still works very well on the handheld even years later. It is a textbook example of how a simple but perfectly tuned arcade principle can withstand being ported to a tiny screen without losing its addictiveness. Players who know the original from arcade machines will appreciate that the GBC version does not try to add unnecessary new mechanics and relies purely on the quality of the early-1980s template.