Atari's Centipede is Getting A Community Led Card Game

What is Centipede?

Centipede was an Arcade Game made by Atari in 1981, as a fixed shooter game made by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg. It was one of the first to use a trackball, and boasted not just a female designer, which was unusual for the age, but a wide female gamer player base too. The game sees you trying to fend off incoming bugs, but whilst avoiding mushrooms causing havoc. It was also recognisable from its unique colour palette, which Bailey describes the process of finding in an interview with Forbes, made by a technician making another alteration and briefly changing the colours in the meantime. It was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2020.

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Club Made Centipede Card Game 

Atari have today announced its intentions for its fans to help design the Centipede-themed card game, with community votes shaping three elements of the game, the title, the visual style, and a key game mechanic. Each aspect will be put to those signed up to the Atari Club, which you can sign up for to take part. 

Atari has stated they've chosen this method as it aligns with their ongoing commitment to involve the community, where Atari Club has previously designed unique clothing patches, it's now able to shape a game, which also allows it to gather valuable insights and foster ownership amongst its participants. 

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Centipede Game

Although that leaves us with little information on how to game will come out, it's not the first time that the beloved arcade game has been turned into a tabletop game. IDW previously gave us a Centipede game from the co-creator of Dead of Winter,  which honoured the original artwork style that had players play against each other as the centipede or the gnome, with mushrooms between you. Whilst we know Atari's approach will end up with a card game, it's as yet unclear how well developed the game is at this stage, as to whether results of the vote have been pre made, or it's still in early development. There's no word yet on potential release date, so stay tuned!