128 · MILLIPEDE

• You are lost in a dark, perilous, and enchanted forest. Dark dangerous mushrooms push up through the squishy forest floor, snaring you on every side. Something slimy flashes through the mushrooms, moving in on you. The MILLIPEDE, not a normal size one, but the gigantic monster, is attacking you. All you have to fight back with is the magic arrow. Shoot his head to turn him into mushrooms. But that is not the only thing attacking you, there are more creepy, crawly, buzzing, swarming, creatures in this forest. Keep fighting with your magic arrow, if you are lucky, you may survive. Watch out, here they come.
• Introductions
  • Arcade Fever
    • Capcom and Konami are constantly releasing their arcade hits, but relatively quickly
    • In JUST SEP and OCT
      • Namco delivers both Galaga and Xevious
      • Nintendo re-releases DK Classics
    • HAL Lab joins! With Joust and Millipede
  • HAL Lab
    • We forgot to cover them in the Joust episode.
    • Best known for Kirby, Mother, and Smash. Pretty much Nintendo Second Party
    • The company got its name because "each letter put them one step ahead of IBM" - http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/11/iwata_explains_where_the_name_hal_laboratory_came_from
      • IBM MILLIPEDE MEMORY
    • Nintendo offered to rescue HAL from bankruptcy on the condition that HAL employee Satoru Iwata was appointed as its president, which he became between 1993 and 2000.[5] Iwata later became president of Nintendo.
  • And this is all as next week we get Pac-Man from Tengen
• Overview
  • The objective is to score as many points as possible by destroying all segments of the millipede as it moves toward the bottom of the screen, as well as destroying and avoiding other enemies.
  • IN ARCADE - The game is played with a trackball and a single fire button, which can be held down for rapid-fire.
• Gameplay
  • THE UI
  • The Loop of
  • Ratio of what is on screen
  • What should’ve been added?
• Centipede
  • The millipede moves faster and its "head" segment is more difficult to hit than in Centipede.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Centipede - Scary 3D Atari game in 1998
  • Centipede Infestation - Wii and the Nintendo 3DS. It is a re-imagining of the Centipede video game franchise.
• EGL
• Next week - Pac-Man

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 You are lost in a dark, perilous, and enchanted forest. Dark, dangerous mushrooms push up through the squishy forest floor, snaring you on every side. Something slimy flashes through the mushrooms, moving in on you. The millipede! Not a normal-sized one, but the gigantic monster is attacking you. All you have to fight back with is the magic arrow. Shoot his head to turn him into mushrooms. But then, it is not the only thing attacking you. There are more creepy, crawly, buzzing, swarming creatures in this forest. Keep fighting with your magic arrow. If you are lucky, you may survive. Watch out! Here they come!

00:58 And welcome to NEStalgia! Chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And guys, I hope you're ready for a little arcade fever, because just about since September of 1988 through the rest of this year, we're just going to be playing a ton of arcade games.

01:19 Well, I honestly thought that we were starting, like, the reading of an audiobook right there. Is there any more unique prose regarding Millipede? Yeah, I just, and you know, other boxes have had very long things like that, but they never felt worthy of reading, but I think this one really set the mood. Yeah, I think that this guy, this guy should be doing more than backs of boxes. He should be doing backs of novels. I kind of want, like, a Millipede-Silent Hills crossover. Is that the, like, natural progression? Like, backs of boxes, and then, like, you move up to backs of novels? Yeah, yeah, it's back of, yeah, back of VHS's is somewhere in there, too, but... Some people collect VHS boxes just because of that, they like the way those things look.

02:03 Anyway, arcade fever, Capcom and Konami constantly releasing arcade hits all the time, but relatively quickly, we're getting, like, a lot of stuff. Like, from September and October of 1988, Namco has given us both Galaga and Xevious, Nintendo re-released the Donkey Kong classics, and now Hal Laboratories is joining with, well, they did join us with Joust, and now they're joining us again with Millipede here. So, anything to say about, like, older 1980s arcade games coming in this late into the decade?

02:37 I'm sure it was appreciated by the, just in the same way that, like, I love when an old classic game that I loved from PS1 is now available on my PS4. But I think to us, now looking back, that little level of appreciation might be lost, at least to me personally. Yeah, I kind of thought we were past this, but I don't think it's ever truly going to stop. It's, I think we're going to keep getting these spurts.

03:03 Yeah, I mean, to be fair, they're, like, still releasing Millipede on probably Switch and PS4, right? Like, they're just never going to stop releasing these games. Yeah, probably. And I wanted to talk about Hal Laboratories for a minute, because we did not cover them in the Joust episode, and I think it's kind of important that we talk about them.

03:21 Like, they are pretty active today with some stuff. I just can't put my finger on what franchise they're attached to. Well, it's good that you recognize them, at least, because they're best known for Kirby and the creation of Kirby. Ah, yes. Mother, the Mother or Earthbound franchise, and Super Smash Brothers. I think that's what I recognize them from. That's where I see that little doggy. Yeah, there was that little thing on the menu screen, right?

03:46 Yep. It's pretty much a Nintendo second party at this point, but back then, the only thing Hal Laboratory had as, like, a, you know, bargaining chip for Nintendo was they had Satoru Iwata as, like, one of their employees, and Nintendo loved that guy. He's such a nice guy. You know, the company actually got its name, Hal Laboratories. They got it because each letter of the H-A-L puts them one letter ahead of IBM.

04:14 I think you're mixing that up with where Hal from 9000 got his name. Yeah, I was going to say, I thought maybe it was from 2001. I'm almost positive. Because I was going to point out that it's not, you know, another coincidence then is that IBM happened to release around, I want to say, like, early 2000s. 2000s, they released IBM Millipede Memory, which was special memory that they had created for their processor chips. And I don't think it's unlikely that that would be to retaliate for Hal Lab releasing Millipede on the NES. And then IBM says, well, we can use the Millipede name, too. And even though you're three letters ahead of us, we're still better than you.

04:57 It's funny, though, because there's, like, kind of two ways of looking at it. Like, that A is better than B because, like, you know, like, number one is better than number two. But also, you can be like, well, the later letters could be better. You know what I mean? Like, what determines that the earlier letter is, like, better than B?

05:15 I mean, the phone book. It's the phone book. Mike, I think Mike is just projecting all of this. You know, I think Mike has a thing about the, has a thing about the alphabet. And he's got a bone to pick with the letters I, B, and M. No, I actually, I just wanted to make the crazy connection there of IBM having, like, Millipede memory. And Hal Laboratory is making Millipede. And Hal Laboratory is basically just stealing the name from 2001 of Space Odyssey's Hal 9000.

05:42 Which Iwata actually said in an interview. It was just a straight rip from Space Odyssey. So I think that's, I think that's all pretty funny. I just wanted to throw it out there. It's a fun little menage a trois. Everything's in jest around here, okay? We don't actually provide any real knowledge to anyone.

05:57 If you want some real knowledge, Nintendo, the only reason why Hal Laboratories is still around today is because Nintendo made them a second party when they saved Hal from bankruptcy. On the condition that Hal employee Satoru Iwata was appointed its president. Wow. That's some, like, indentured servitude right there. So, so they did it. They said, yeah, you could be the president. And he was the president from 1993 to 2000. And then later became president of Nintendo until his early passing. So I think it's, like, it's pretty crazy how much they really didn't care for Hal Laboratories. And they just cared about this one programmer who was really good at making video games.

06:40 And, you know, this is all to say with this Arcade Fever stuff. I mean, next week we've got Pac-Man from Tengen. So, like, things are constantly going to keep happening with arcades. I think that's enough about that. And let's move on to Millipede. What do you guys say? Sounds good. I'm okay with that. All right. So, Sean, walk me through Millipede in a way that isn't as artsy as the back of the box. All right. So in Millipede, you play as a cursor at the bottom of the screen. And there is a very long centipede slash millipede slash creepy crawly quickly coming down towards you. And there's a bunch of, you know, foliage in the way. I think they're all mushrooms. I can't remember.

07:22 And every time the millipede hits one, he changes direction. He's got to kill him. And every time you kill him, he breaks apart into little pieces. And you have to kill all those. And there are spiders. And there are other bugs. And it's a little overwhelming. And that's pretty much how you play the game. Yeah. This is a lot like Space Invaders on speed, right? Yeah. The Space Invader enemies, which might just be called invaders,

07:50 they move across the screen very, very slowly. And you have these barriers to protect you. And you kind of have to shoot all of them. But if they get to the bottom, then you're automatically game over. And Millipede, the millipede or, you know, the centipede, they both look the same to me. They come down the screen rapidly. But if they touch the bottom, that doesn't necessarily mean game over. You can dodge around them and continue to try to attack them. So I think this is a great step up from Space Invaders in that regard. Like, how do we improve on an already existing, you know, successful arcade game? And I think Millipede and centipede were the answer to that.

08:30 Yeah. There's like a little end zone, if you will, that you're allowed to go forward and backward in. So you can't fly forward the whole way. But it was nice to be able to move forward a little bit to get around certain obstacles. Yeah, it's definitely necessary because the whole time that you're trying to hit this millipede, you're being assaulted by these spiders and like ladybugs and shit. And I think that it definitely makes it a higher octane experience than Space Invaders.

09:05 Yeah. And so let's talk about just the, you know, the gameplay in terms of everything that the ratio of what's on screen and how much you have to deal with and stuff like that. Because it seems like it could be fun at first, but maybe it becomes overwhelming.

09:18 Joe, how did you feel about controlling your, I don't know, I want to call them like a little ship. Sean called them a cursor, which I think feels fine too. How did you feel about controlling that and being able to tackle everything that was on screen? Well, as far as actually controlling the cursor, first of all, I don't know what that is. Is that supposed to be a person or like, are you, you're in the forest, right?

09:37 It looks like a ship to me though, but either way, controlling you yourself is pretty like dead on. You know, there's no floatiness or not even like good floatiness that we have. It's like literally you stop on a dime. It's pretty easy to actually control yourself. But as far as the obstacles in front of you, you know, you start with a lot of these mushrooms that are in the way.

09:58 That are kind of like little obstacles for you to kind of shoot past or shoot around or shoot through to hit the millipede. And one thing I think we haven't mentioned yet is that every time you hit a segment of the millipede, it turns into another mushroom. So like as you're doing better, you're creating more obstacles for yourself, which I thought was an interesting way to kind of keep things from getting too easy. And you're creating more millipedes too, Joe. When you shoot in the middle of a millipede, you divide it in half. Right. So it's still the same amount of targets, but now it's, now it's harder because they've, they've split up from each other.

10:33 Mm-hmm. Uh, so yeah, they, they do a pretty good job of, of making sure that like the gameplay just organically continues to get harder without having to like, this is where we'll program. I mean, not that they didn't do this, but they didn't have to do, uh, right away. Like, all right, now we're going to program it to be like more difficult. It'll just naturally get more difficult by the way of the way everything works.

10:55 I think they do a little bit of both there because yeah, there's the organic difficulty increase by shooting the millipede, splitting it in half, creating more targets. But, uh, if you survive for what the game feels is too long, it will just start throwing more stuff at you until you die. And then it sort of clears the screen. But in addition to like the spiders, you'll get like little gnats or flies, I don't know. And they just sort of rain down on you, uh, if you're alive for too long. Um, and, uh, also there are other bugs along the way that have effects on the game that aren't as direct. Like, I think depending on the color of the ladybug sort of looking thing, it'll shift the screen down or shift the screen up. I thought that was a snail.

11:44 Hmm. Like maybe it's the snail. I don't remember it being associated with the snail. Got it. But no, I mean, like, I think, I think it's a trade-off. Like, it's really cool that there's all this different stuff, you know, available to you to shoot at in the game. Like that they took a wide variety of insects and didn't just make them all like, hey, this is the enemies.

12:02 Shoot them, get points. It's like, oh, if you shoot the spiders, yeah, they're worth more points, which help you get more lives. Or, oh, if you shoot the ladybug snail thing, everything moves down a bit. Or if you shoot those flies that come out in rapid succession and, you know, it's like a bonus stage style thing to rack up points quickly. Like, I thought that stuff was cool, but it just, it happens all in unison. So it's almost like a visual assault. I couldn't find myself focusing.

12:29 No, it's, you're very right there. Because I think, like, when we talk about quiet time in games, we're usually talking about, like, you know, in an action adventure title where there aren't any enemies and you just sort of get to, like, look around. But I think quiet time exists in arcades as well in a more small package where it's just, like, you have a moment to breathe. And in this game, you never have a moment to breathe unless you died. You have, like, two seconds. Yeah, there's no stage clear, right? There's no moment where it resets everything for you. Am I wrong in thinking that?

13:07 It'll partially reset. Like, if you destroy every segment of the millipede, then the millipede goes back to the top and maybe some enemies despawn. No, totally. But I meant, like, there's no... Spiders don't. Yeah, but there's no moment of, like, stage clear up there and you have, like, a moment to collect yourself and the whole screen, like, refreshes it. Yeah, exactly. It's just on death. Joe, you were talking about the movement, and I wanted to get your feeling on this because, obviously, the NES didn't have a trackball first-party controller. I'm sure somebody made it third-party. But in the arcade, this game was only played with a trackball, so this way you could really get free roam movement on your cursor.

13:49 Do you think that that would make a huge difference in how you played, or you thought that playing on an NES controller was fine? Well, only now that you mention it. I mean, I wasn't aware of that, so on the NES controller, it felt fine because it's all I know, and it felt like it was perfectly functional to me, especially compared to some other games that we've played in the past. I thought this was... It didn't, like, blow me away with some impressive, you know, level of control, but it was just, like, perfectly, like, accurate. But I can see how it would completely change the way that you approach the game with a trackball, because you just have a different level of, you know, freedom, I guess?

14:27 Yeah. No, I would very much prefer to play this game with a trackball. Yeah. Yeah, now that, like, I know that that's out there, that does sound like it could be easier. But I don't think that that makes this one a bad way of controlling it. It's just not as good. Yeah, and there also, there was a single fire button on the arcade version that could be held down for rapid fire. Now, I don't think you can do that with the NES controller, correct? I think if you hold down A, it doesn't continue to shoot.

14:55 Well, in addition to that, it only has the memory, or maybe not the memory, but it only allows one bullet to be on screen at a time. So, like, we've seen in several other games that if you miss and it hits the top of the screen, that's all time that you are just defenseless. I don't know if that's the way that it is in the arcade game.

15:16 Do you have any information on that, Mike? Right. No, that's true. You know, and I just tested it, too, and it does seem like it's probably the same. What they're describing as rapid fire is probably the same as it appears on the NES version. That you can just hold it down and it'll continue to shoot, but you're only allowed one shoot per screen at a time.

15:38 I see. You know, another thing that we didn't talk about that kind of affects the gameplay but really has nothing to do with it is the user interface here during the game. Because there's a large chunk of screen real estate dedicated to this brick background that just kind of houses in a mortise the gameplay itself. And then there's, like, sections for your score and the top score and how many ships you have and stuff like that. But did it feel like that was just hogging too much of the screen for something that wasn't really using that much graphical power to begin with?

16:12 Absolutely. That's the first thing that I noticed. I'm glad you mentioned that because it's, you know, on the right side, you have, like, a little bit. You have your score. You've got, you know, like, what round you're on. At the bottom, you have, like, one little sentence that tells you, like, when your next bonus is. And then, but then, like, most of this frame around your gameplay is just complete empty space.

16:36 So I'm not sure why, if there's a reason it had to be like this where, you know, some reason where it would have looked terrible because they didn't feel like updating, like, the pixel count to everything. So they wanted to keep it smaller or something. I don't know. But it felt weird that we were playing it such a tiny. It's almost like half the size of the regular screen. Maybe a little more than that.

16:54 But yeah, I'd say it's like 50, 60 percent of the screen space. I actually didn't really pay any mind to it. But so it didn't bother me. But now that I'm looking at it with a more critical eye, it is very weird because it's not even, like, justified correctly. Yeah. We usually see things on the NES housed in mortises for I'm thinking, like, the goonies. Mortis. A mortis? A mortis. Yeah. Yep. Interesting.

17:23 We usually see that for, like, the goonies, you know, when you went into, like, the first person point of view. And that, I guess, had something to do with, like, you know, to convey a lot of information in a smaller screen or something like that. And that makes sense there. But here, you're not really getting a graphic update. You're actually getting a graphic downgrade from Millipede on the arcade.

17:44 Yeah. And if you're not just looking at it, if you were to just take at the bottom where it says next bonus, put that on the side under everything else, you'd fill in some of the extra space that you're leaving on the right side. And then you can just remove the brick background from the bottom, the left, and the top. And then you'd have just, you could just have one bar on the side of the screen if you really need that bar.

18:05 I mean, granted, that would screw with the ratio and everything. But at that point... Yeah, when you first mentioned it, like, again, because I didn't quite remember its, like, the dimensions, I thought it was to make it the same aspect ratio of a cabinet, which, you know, usually has, like, more of a vertical orientation. But no, this is just a square.

18:28 And I'm almost positive that it is at a lower resolution than in any other version of this game. So, yeah, I don't know what their thoughts were. Yeah, well, I think I also agree with you, Sean, though, that it wasn't distracting either. So you can still play the game just fine. It just feels almost weird, you know? It doesn't harpen or do anything to the actual gameplay experience. I don't think it would be any harder if it was bigger either, you know?

18:53 Yeah, no, it's just, I mean, all the information is there. Right. So this isn't quite a shmup by my standards because there's no power-ups and you don't progress throughout the screen. But there are some cool things that happen that are still, like, in the realm of design for millipede and centipede. And that's those, like, gas explosions that you can hit throughout the stage to cause, like, a bunch of things to go away at once. Did you guys use those at all? Was that just something that you got lucky and hit? Was there a strategy to them?

19:28 I tried to hit them. I was very unlucky. I think once I was able to clear, like, a whole millipede with one, but it was by accident. I think I tried at first until I realized that I was just more hurting myself by, like, focusing too much on, like, trying to get, like, some big explosion to take out as many enemies. And I was not focusing on things I should be. So then by the end, I would just hit them when I organically hit them, and it would either help or not.

19:53 Yeah, I think this is one of the few instances of something that's, like, it's great that it's there because it also helps, like, beginner players by chance. You know, like, it's just they're littered throughout the screen and there's a chance for you to hit them and that can help you. And it's also, like, great for pro players who know what they're doing and can time those things to take out an entire millipede swarm.

20:12 You know, I think very rarely in these NES game designs are we seeing things that are helpful to both. A lot of times in NES games that we've been playing, it's either the game is hard and it's great for hardcore players or it's too easy because of extra things that were added into it. Yeah, I guess it can kind of also be chalked up to a little bit of RNG because I imagine that this game is maybe not, like, in the classic sense of, like, procedurally generated. But I don't see any pattern here in, like, where the mushrooms are.

20:45 So maybe that's just because it's not a negative randomness, but a randomness that has the possibility of helping you that it can be helpful to both the casual and the more hardcore. This might feel a little silly to ask, but what else should have been added to a game like this? We kind of briefly complained about how much is going on on the screen, but are there things that we could have added? Like, I'm thinking, you know, that stage clear thing would have been great. But also, is there another way to do a different variety of stages here?

21:20 Obviously, this is more of a pipe dream thing, so don't let the limitations bother you here. But what would you guys have liked to see to keep this game fresh as you continue to play it? I'd say, like, maybe a more handcrafted level design so that it's not like a main game. Like, don't replace the main game with this. But if there was, like, a challenge mode where it was preset, like, a preset design and there was a correct place to shoot to, like, get the whole level over in, like, 30 seconds or something like that. I mean, that could be something fun. But in terms of general game design here, I think there's already so much that adding anything more would be a problem.

22:05 So that's my opinion on it. Totally. Joe, anything to add? I mean, I don't have anything off the top of my head. But I do really like that idea of, like, an alternate mode like that that just has, like, little interesting challenges that are just unique. But, yeah, I feel like, you know, this game is targeting people who just, who like this really fast, like, how high of a score can I get experience. So I don't know that it needs to, like, do anything else that's particularly special other than just, like, continue to get harder and harder and, you know, faster pace and keep it exciting, you know?

22:41 Yeah, the easiest thing I could think of was just adding a two-player mode because there's really nothing, you know, limiting the idea of, like, you know, you would be able to work in tandem. It wouldn't be a competitive two-player. I like, you know, but you would still be gaining points separately. I like that idea of just because there's so much going on on the screen, a friend helping you out might actually work in favor of the game because it would be less chaotic. You know, you take the left side, I'll take the right side, and then when they come down, it's like, okay, you stay up, I'll stay down.

23:08 Yeah, I think that that could be fun. Definitely. Cool. All right, so, I mean, that's pretty much it from a gameplay perspective. But, you know, we have to talk about the fact that Millipede is actually a sequel to Centipede, which I think is brilliant. I think that's a great, like, where do we go from Centipede? Well, add more legs.

23:27 But there's not much different between the two games. Really, the only difference is that the Millipede moves faster, and I think its head segment is more difficult to hit as a result of its moving faster. So it was just considered a more difficult version of the classic Centipede game. Do you think it was a mistake to give Millipede, which was the faster version on the NES, should they have released Centipede?

23:54 As, like, a way to welcome all types of gamers? Because video games are relatively new to consoles. You know, if it's virtually the same game, should they have included both? Like, what's the thoughts here? I think, I mean, I don't think that it, I would say that I think that they should have done Centipede over Millipede. But now that you mention it, I don't see a reason that they shouldn't have just packaged it as both if they weren't going to release Centipede separately anyways.

24:18 Yeah. I mean, if it's just a quantifiably more improved version of the game, then I don't see the point in including the earlier one. Like, if there was actually, like, a gameplay difference aside from it moves faster, then sure, they should have released Centipede. But it's the same. Yeah, I guess that's true. I don't remember the last time I played Centipede, so I can't really compare it. But yeah, if what you guys are saying is, like, it's, this is just a better version of that. Like, they just, like, fixed some bugs, no pun intended. Then, yeah, then I think that's, that's the way to go. All right. And, of course, there, it wouldn't be a Nostalgia episode without some obscure sequels and spinoffs.

25:02 And there's nothing after Millipede as far as I know. Right, Sean and Joe? There's no, there's no, like, thousand-peed or. You didn't, yeah, you didn't play Killipede? Millipede, it would be a thousand, right? Because of that weird that Milla means. Yeah, it would have to be, it would have to be, like, Billipede, Trillipede, right? I don't know, though. Because Milla doesn't mean million. It means, it's like millennium, right? Right, it has a thousand instead of, because Centi is, Centi is a hundred. Yeah, so what's after a millennium? It's actually going, it's actually getting smaller, so it would be, like, Micropede. Oh, okay. I like Micropede. That would be a fun exploration, like, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids game.

25:39 What if we just took every letter of Millipede and used one letter earlier in the alphabet? So, Nillipede? No, no, every letter. Oh, oh, I see. No, for every, for every single letter, yep. Okay, I don't think that that would be a word. Yeah, I don't think so either. But also, like, what's stopping them from just making, like, you know, Centipedia and it being, like, it being, like, a, it's a learning game. It's a knowledge-based game. It's like, it's like Donkey Kong Jr. math, but with Centipede. And you shoot fractions. So every time, yeah, every time you hit a, so every time you hit a section of the Millipede, it'll give you a random fact from Encyclopedia Dramatica, but Encyclopedia Britannica.

26:20 Did you know that the Dead Sea has, like, a pH value of 7.9 or something? No, wait. Centipedia has to be the Centipede wiki name, right? Like, it must be. Why would Centipede have a wiki website? Everything's a wiki.

26:35 I didn't know if that was enough to warn it, but you know what? It's true because there are two other Centipede games. No other Millipede games, but Centipede was re-released in 1998 as a very scary 3D Atari game, which, and by scary, I mean in the standards of 1998 scary. I'm sure Sean would say something like this. No, it's not. It's not. It's just the same idea as Centipede, except for now it's, like, an FPS. In the way that, like, Atari would be able to make an FPS in 1998, so pretty damn awful. But, you know, now you can free roam through as you try to tackle a 3D Centipede through a forest. I don't think it's an FPS.

27:20 What? It's a third-person shooter? Yeah, you can, like, jump on stuff. Yeah, it's weird. I don't like it. Yeah, and then there's also a lot later in 2000 and... Hmm. I don't have it here. 2011. Centipede Infestation was released on the Wii. Okay. It's a post-apocalyptic world where most of the Earth has been turned into a desert wasteland inhabited by, you guessed it, centipedes. So, when I go onto YouTube and type in centipede infestation, I just get... Exterminator website. Maybe they, like, Wii in there. Yeah, add the Wii. Yeah, that was a poor decision on my part. But do you think maybe that's why they didn't continue the centipede brand? It wasn't exactly something consumer-friendly?

28:12 You mean it's, like, a little too... It's too, like, M for mature? Well, you know, it's like, yeah, like, Pac-Man, you look that up, you only get Pac-Man. Centipede, it's like, it's not even in the top page, probably, of Google results. Yeah. I think that's probably why. It was the Google results that they were... Yeah, they didn't have good SEO. Yeah. I don't even know what I would categorize centipede infestation as. I'm looking at this game on the... It's like a twin stick. Okay. Yeah, I agree. I don't really get it, because you can't, like, shoot the centipede in half like you would in any other game, but...

28:47 Yeah, that's weird. Whatever it takes, right? Whatever it takes. Money. And whatever it takes for this game to get on the Essential Games list, we're gonna find out right now, because we're gonna do the Essential Games list.

29:03 All right, it's time to vote. And so, Joe, that means it's your time to vote for the Essential Games list, centipede. Millipede. Oh, my gosh. No. I had my notes all ready for centipede after you said that. I'm sorry. You must vote on millipede. Centipede is not eligible. I feel like whenever I vote on one of these arcade games, like, I'm just saying the same thing I say on a lot of the arcade games, where I think this was good for an arcade game. It was good for its time.

29:31 I don't think that it has enough to offer. Particularly for me, I'm not really into these, like, quick arcade games that, like, you get almost... For me, I get, like, obsessed with getting better at it because it's so fast-paced, and then when I'm done, I kind of feel like not particularly rewarded whether I did good or not. I'm the same way with, like, phone games and everything.

29:53 That's the reason I personally am not, like, falling in love with this game. And then also I just think that the NES version of this classic game, it gives you the exact game, but it's not improved in any way, and it's in this weird mortis. I don't have too much more to say about it. I'm kind of just rambling. It's not essential, but it's not bad. That was, like, the most roundabout way of giving an essential games vote, but there it is.

30:19 I like that explanation, and, you know, I just wonder, because you're always saying, like, I think this was good for an arcade game. Do you have a lower bar? You know, I guess I kind of do, but it comes down to, again, like, personal preference. I'm just not a fan of that kind of game too much. Like, for example, you know, I don't know if anyone's ever heard of the game Snood.

30:41 Maybe not, but when I was younger, there's... I like how you just got met with silence. Yeah, no one even answered, but I'm just going to plow through it to keep it from being too awkward.

30:50 When I was younger, we had this arcade game called Snood that, like, my whole family was, like, obsessed with, including me, because it was just really addictive. And I remember at one point realizing that I wasn't actually having fun with the game. I was just, like, wanted to... I just needed to up my score. I needed to up my score.

31:08 And that's what a lot of arcade games kind of give me, where I just feel like I'm not fully rewarded by the end of it. Yeah, I would say that, you know, for me, arcade games are... It's, like, a weird thing because it's technically all, like, grouped into one system of things. But there's... Arcade games have grown so much from, like, the 70s to now. And so I think it's weird when people are like, oh, what are your favorite arcade games? It's like, you kind of have to talk about, you know, in five-year spans which arcade games you're talking about. Because there's some games that, like, in the arcade couldn't come to the Super Nintendo because they were so powerful, you know? And now it's, like, most arcade games are just gimmicks.

31:48 And you just, you know, they're relying on, like, Dave and Buster's tactics. Right, right. To get you to keep playing. Yeah, and to be clear, too, when I'm saying arcade game, I'm talking about things like this, where it's just there's, like, one gameplay mechanic that you're kind of honing. And this or, like, something... If you want something, like, a little more recent, something like Flappy Bird. But, you know, obviously, like, there were Ninja Turtle games that were arcade games that are totally not like this. And I love those games. So it's really, I'm considering arcade games that, like, sort of one-trick pony that just, like, you sort of get better and better at, like, the one thing as it gets more and more difficult.

32:23 Totally getcha. And, you know, I'm not going to put this on my essential games list, but I am going to list it as a play it. I thought this was pretty fun. And the speed, while overwhelming, I mean, it's... What's to lose? There's no story to play. There's nothing really happening. You're just trying to go for your own personal best anyway. So I had a good time playing this game. And I think it's worth playing in the arcade or on this NES version. I found it to be not that much different.

32:47 So it's fine. It's just not anything that I would rave to put on the essential games list. What about you, Sean? Yeah, well, Millipede, Centipede, these just sort of fall into that idea for me of just, like, the canon of early video games. It's just you've... Everybody has played this game. I don't think that you need our recommendation to know what this game is. I was glad that during this episode I learned a nice vocabulary word, which is mortis.

33:20 But other than that, our recommendation isn't going to tell you to play this game or not. You know Millipede. You've played Millipede. It's not essential. I love that. That should be the new back of the box. Like, it's Millipede. You know Millipede. Buy Millipede. It's not essential. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they put that in, like, the fine print at the bottom.

33:44 All right. I think this was a great episode. I'm glad that we all kind of had, like, a, you know, a hodgepodge of thoughts here. We both seem... We all seem to like it and not like it at the same time. It's a beautiful thing when games can make you feel both things at once. Or it's just confusing and you don't know what to think of yourself anymore. The only thing better than that is when games make you just like something. That's true. But very rarely do I even, like... I don't even know if my favorite games of all time, I just constantly said, I like this the whole way through. But I'm also not a robot. So maybe that's why. All right. Next week we have Pac-Man.

34:24 You know, I don't know if there's anything to say there. This guy is just about as iconic as Mario and Sonic. So we're going to have a bit of a doozy to talk about him. But we're going to do our best. Obviously, nobody can cover... Pac-Man would need his own podcast, I feel like, to really go through everything that he's done. So we're really just going to talk about this NES game and have fun with it. So don't expect too much like our Legend of Zelda or Castlevania episodes because those were, you know, big NES games. This is more like a... Don't challenge me, Mike. Yeah. Well, I'm just saying like, you know, this was a big thing on the arcade.

34:58 I hope nobody's expecting a two-hour magnum opus on Pac-Man on the NES. Yes. It's a little different. But we're going to have special guest cheater Billy Mitchell on the show. So that'll be fun. We'll be right back.