Is Centipede a SHMUP?

[Dylan1CC]

As long as Space Invaders and Galaga are considered shmups then I would say yes. Shooter-maze game. gasp Maybe the real precursor to Guardian Legend?

Got that one covered too.

http://crucialclassics_23.1up.com/

Yup, actually have that one book marked. It's articles like that and the recent well done feature on comical shooters which really engender my respect for 1Up.

[dave4shmups]

I haven't played Centipede in forever, but I thought one of the insects shot bullets at you. Maybe my memory is clouded, I used to play some Centipede clone on the Apple IIs at school all the time and I may be getting it confused with that. Incidentally, does anyone know what that clone is called? It was fairly famous back then. The right side of the screen was all score and life information like a lot of Genesis verts or PC shooters like Imperishable Night, etc. I remember thinking it was faster and better than the arcade Centipede.

OT, did you ever play Oregon Trail? First Apple IIe game I played.

Seriously, though, there is an Apple II board on Gamefaqs.com and I would ask there as well.

[system11]

Another vote for Centipede = shmup. You know, I never once saw a Millipede though.

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

[quote="Alpolio"]Yeah, it's a classic shmup. In fact, I'd say that it's a cute'em up version of Space Invaders. Probably the first cute'em up of them all.[/quote


Damn...we have a contradiction here(from other thread)...I'm glad your finally realizing.

Space War, was the first shmup however...it all evolved from there. Asteroids? Star Castle? Sinistar?
Defender could have been the first "side scroller". Evolution would be the likes of Vangaurd, Scramble...Thunder Force!?

You may have been an ape at one time...now your a man. Get it?

Ok, ok...so the're "Primal Shmups"!!! Still, shmups nontheless.

Meanwhile, I'm off to drink another beer! Bye.

[Ceph]

Thanks for all the replies! Very informative 1up.com article (thank you for the link Vexorg!) Wikipedia defines it as a shmup, too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede_%28video_game%29

I am now fairly convinced that Centipede is indeed a Shoot 'Em Up. That's what you do, after all: You shoot obstacles and enemies that are coming at you. And it's even in tate! It surely is *not* a maze game.

I haven't played Centipede in forever, but I thought one of the insects shot bullets at you

Well, sometimes a flea falls down the screen, leaving new mushrooms in its wake. If said flea hits you, you die.
I suppose you could call the flea nature's bullet

About Centipede being a cute em up: The original arcade cabinet design suggests otherwise:
http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?let ... me_id=7299

[Alpolio]

Yeah, it's a classic shmup. In fact, I'd say that it's a cute'em up version of Space Invaders. Probably the first cute'em up of them all.

Damn...we have a contradiction here(from other thread)...I'm glad your finally realizing.

Space War, was the first shmup however...it all evolved from there. Asteroids? Star Castle? Sinistar?
Defender could have been the first "side scroller". Evolution would be the likes of Vangaurd, Scramble...Thunder Force!?

You may have been an ape at one time...now your a man. Get it?

Ok, ok...so the're "Primal Shmups"!!! Still, shmups nontheless.

Meanwhile, I'm off to drink another beer! Bye.

Huh? I think that you grabbed something that I said out of context.

I believe that they're all shmups and I have always believed that. In fact, I'm in an argument in another thread about my belief that Contra is just a hori version of Robotron 2084. And just because it has a platform to run on shouldn't disqualify it as a shmup. That's giving platformers way too much credit. After all, our shmups were here first!

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

No,no no...
I'm not "grabbing anything out of context.
You can read it yourself, under the "First Shmup You played" thread.
Anyways, I'm not arguing with you, but you have contraticted yourself a bit.
Is it just me, did I imagine it, or is it real? Or surreal?

BTW: I like tacos, and I have been banned from Gamefaqs, so watch out for me!!!

[bpe]

It's not a shump due to the abscense of a scrolling background

and

It's always been my experience that anything that shoots upwards is considered a shmup.


Well in that case, if we're killing time anyway : how about Moon patrol ?

It's scrolling, you have a vehicle that can go left and right, it shoots at crap in the sky, which shoots back at you, and it has stuff in the way that you need to dodge (well, jump over) or blow up.

[Ceph]

Moon Patrol's emphasis is on driving and jumping, so I'd say it's more of a platformer.
Maybe a 'Drive and Shoot'

[professor ganson]

Hey Ceph,
Because you seem interested in the issue of what is and is not a shmup, let me tell you my own way of thinking about it atm. I'll quote (with slight changes made) from something I wrote before:

To my mind there are two ordinary uses of the term "shmup."

1. A not-so-inclusive use.
2. An inclusive use.

Shmups are usually defined by reference to paradigm/exemplary cases. We say: "Shmups are games like Gradius, R-Type, and DoDonPachi." With the not-so-inclusive use, we are very strict about how similar the games must be to the paradigm cases. On this usage we do not allow even Robotron, Galaga, Space Invaders or Defender.

With the inclusive use of the term "shmup" we are less strict about how similar the games have to be to Gradius and R-Type. Indeed, on this more flexible use, we might even include Galaga, Space Invaders, OR CENTIPEDE among the paradigm cases. This is the use that we employ when we have our Top 25 lists each year.

It seems to me that one could use the term "shmup" in an EVEN WIDER sense, and include Contra and Metal Slug. But this is NOT the ordinary usage. "Shmup" does not mean just 2D shooter. The term "shmup" is defined by reference to paradigm cases. Contra and Metal Slug just are very different from Gradius and R-Type-- more akin to platformers.

I'm not sure this is the right way to think about the issue, but, as others have noted, there isn't much at stake here.

[ROBOTRON]

I haven't played Centipede in forever, but I thought one of the insects shot bullets at you. Maybe my memory is clouded, I used to play some Centipede clone on the Apple IIs at school all the time and I may be getting it confused with that. Incidentally, does anyone know what that clone is called? It was fairly famous back then. The right side of the screen was all score and life information like a lot of Genesis verts or PC shooters like Imperishable Night, etc. I remember thinking it was faster and better than the arcade Centipede.

"Bug Battle"

[Dylan1CC]

Thanks for all the replies! Very informative 1up.com article (thank you for the link Vexorg!) Wikipedia defines it as a shmup, too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede_%28video_game%29

Make sure you check out their recent article on comical shoooters which I mentioned earlier:

http://1up.com/do/feature?cId=3147303&did=1

[it290]

"Bug Battle"

Nope, the name actually just came to me for some reason - it's 'Nightcrawler'. Otherwise known as 'Photar', I guess.

OT, did you ever play Oregon Trail? Very Happy First Apple IIe game I played.

Who hasn't? You can even get 'you died of dysentery' t-shirts these days, heh.

[BulletMagnet]

I've seen the term "Proto-Shmup" applied to older games like that (Centipede, Space Invaders, etc.), and I think lumping them in there tends to cover things pretty well. Since they were made before shmups really became a "genre" as we know it, but contained early elements of future shooting games which were kept over time, I just kind of slap that term on 'em and leave it at that.

I forget whether or not I ever added "Proto-Shmup" to the glossary...I think I did.

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

I don't like that term, "Proto Shmup"...to me, that sounds like "prototype".

Actually going back in time, these games were a genra.

Oh well, I'll be waiting around for some drama any post now...

[Turrican]

I've seen the term "Proto-Shmup" applied to older games like that (Centipede, Space Invaders, etc.), and I think lumping them in there tends to cover things pretty well. Since they were made before shmups really became a "genre" as we know it, but contained early elements of future shooting games which were kept over time, I just kind of slap that term on 'em and leave it at that.

I forget whether or not I ever added "Proto-Shmup" to the glossary...I think I did.

I liked the term, because it was useful to underline one of the biggest changes in the evolution of the genre (the Y-movement). I didn't like it when it was used as nullstar used to though: to treat proto-shmups as something excluded by shmups (thus excluding them from polls etc). Proto-shmups are perfectly good as long as they're still part of the big shmup family. Let's not saw off our roots.

[Zweihander]

Let's not start this again....

"is metal slug a shmup?"

"is panzer dragoon a shmup?"

"is space invaders a shmup?"

"is centipede a shmup?"

first 2: borderline. second 2: YES.

Centipede is a shmup.

Let's move on. lol

[Ceph]

Hey Ceph,
Because you seem interested in the issue of what is and is not a shmup, let me tell you my own way of thinking about it atm. I'll quote (with slight changes made) from something I wrote before:

To my mind there are two ordinary uses of the term "shmup."

1. A not-so-inclusive use.
2. An inclusive use.

Shmups are usually defined by reference to paradigm/exemplary cases. We say: "Shmups are games like Gradius, R-Type, and DoDonPachi." With the not-so-inclusive use, we are very strict about how similar the games must be to the paradigm cases. On this usage we do not allow even Robotron, Galaga, Space Invaders or Defender.

With the inclusive use of the term "shmup" we are less strict about how similar the games have to be to Gradius and R-Type. Indeed, on this more flexible use, we might even include Galaga, Space Invaders, OR CENTIPEDE among the paradigm cases. This is the use that we employ when we have our Top 25 lists each year.

It seems to me that one could use the term "shmup" in an EVEN WIDER sense, and include Contra and Metal Slug. But this is NOT the ordinary usage. "Shmup" does not mean just 2D shooter. The term "shmup" is defined by reference to paradigm cases. Contra and Metal Slug just are very different from Gradius and R-Type-- more akin to platformers.

I'm not sure this is the right way to think about the issue, but, as others have noted, there isn't much at stake here.

I think Wikipedia's definition is pretty fool-proof and I mostly agree with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooter_%28game%29
The genre "Shooter game" contains several sub genres, like Rail Shooter, Run-and-Gun Shooter and Shoot 'em up.

A Shoot 'em up is defined as:

Shoot 'em ups are a very specific sub-genre of shooters, wherein the player has limited control over their movement; if done with 2D gameplay, an example being Ikaruga, this means that a moving background continually pushes the player forward, though they may move up and down and left and right around the screen, typically firing straight forward. Types include fixed shooters, scrolling shooters, tube shooters, and multidirectional shooters.

Well, in Centipede you have a narrow field inside which you can maneuver ("limited control"), you move "left and right", fire "straight forward" and it is a "fixed shooter". This about sums it up.

[CMoon]

Protoshmup was my term, and it was to imply that all the rules that we hold shmups to now really hadn't come into existance; it isn't to imply that protoshmups are early mock-ups of what the games would evolve into (and are thus unimportant), but rather that we can't try to hold something to a set of rules when those rules didn't exist yet.

This makes all these debates really easy. Technically nothing before a certain point is a shmup, because shmups don't actually exist (in the full form we know them now), so we don't have to debate that because you can't travel up the whole screen, or because there are no bullets, that Centipede isn't a shmup. It has ALWAYS been clear to me that this is one of the influential, early games that would lead to Shmupdom; say proto-shmup or whatever you'd like, but it is clearly the stuff from which shmups would take their influence.

[Turrican]

Protoshmup was my term,

Ops, sorry for not crediting the right people

This makes all these debates really easy. Technically nothing before a certain point is a shmup, because shmups don't actually exist (in the full form we know them now)

Not so easy, when everyone still "feels" right to include the most archaic of them all, Space Invaders.

However, the point on debate is that "certain point"... I don't think someone seriously wants to exclude Defender and Galaga...

[Alpolio]

I think Wikipedia's definition is pretty fool-proof and I mostly agree with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooter_%28game%29
The genre "Shooter game" contains several sub genres, like Rail Shooter, Run-and-Gun Shooter and Shoot 'em up.

A Shoot 'em up is defined as:

Shoot 'em ups are a very specific sub-genre of shooters, wherein the player has limited control over their movement; if done with 2D gameplay, an example being Ikaruga, this means that a moving background continually pushes the player forward, though they may move up and down and left and right around the screen, typically firing straight forward. Types include fixed shooters, scrolling shooters, tube shooters, and multidirectional shooters.

Well, in Centipede you have a narrow field inside which you can maneuver ("limited control"), you move "left and right", fire "straight forward" and it is a "fixed shooter". This about sums it up.

I don't really trust wikipedia since everyone on the planet has access to the edit buttons.

Now this is the definition of "shoot 'em up" as listed by Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. link

Function: noun
: a movie or television show with much shooting and bloodshed.

That would be the original definition and it was adopted by the press in the 80's to describe video games with similar characteristics. So shmups should be the master genre for all shooting games. Space Invaders, Darius, Contra, Halo, and Ace Combat. Yeah, even flight combat Sims like Ace Combat -- I remember reviewers calling Star Raiders a shoot'em up back in 1982 and it's like the grand-daddy of all flight combat sims. But somewhere down the line, shmups became the description of games like Space Invaders & Darius and all of the others got pushed out the door. When & why that happened, I don't know.

But my hats off to Malc for including Contra Hard Corps in the Xenocide Files. Link. More power to ya, man!

[Turrican]

But my hats off to Malc for including Contra Hard Corps in the Xenocide Files. Link. More power to ya, man!

Pretty sure that was in the "Borderliners - not shmups but shooty enough" section during the glorious Mk2 times.

[FraGMarE]

It's not a shump due to the abscense of a scrolling background

and

It's always been my experience that anything that shoots upwards is considered a shmup.


Well in that case, if we're killing time anyway : how about Moon patrol ?

It's scrolling, you have a vehicle that can go left and right, it shoots at crap in the sky, which shoots back at you, and it has stuff in the way that you need to dodge (well, jump over) or blow up.

Moon Patrol is a run-n-gun game in disguise. Simply replace the lunar vehicle with a human holding a gun, and what do you have? I rest my case...

As far as Centipede, yes, it's a shmup. It's an early shmup, but it's a shmup. A scrolling background is not required in order for a game to be classified as a shmup. Back when some early shmups were made, scrolling backgrounds weren't even within the technical limitations of the hardware. Maybe that's why they left those backgrounds black, so you could imagine it's scrolling.

As for whether or not Centipede is an early "cute-em-up", ehh, i don't know. I'll leave that one up to you guys.

[Alpolio]

But my hats off to Malc for including Contra Hard Corps in the Xenocide Files. Link. More power to ya, man!

Pretty sure that was in the "Borderliners - not shmups but shooty enough" section during the glorious Mk2 times.

Well, before someone makes another mistake on my stance on this subject: IMO, there's not enough of a difference between a game like Darius and Contra to create a "run-n-gun" sub-genre. I think that it needlessly dilutes the shmup genre. And I believe that all of the classic shmups should retain their original shmup status -- even Star Raiders. I grew up with these games and I "kind of" find it offensive that someone would try to move them to a different genre now.

As for whether or not Centipede is an early "cute-em-up", ehh, i don't know. I'll leave that one up to you guys.

Hey? Is anyone going to make a poll on this? I'm interested on everyone's opinion. If no one else is, then I'm going to. Just give the word and I'll start one.

[system11]

As for whether or not Centipede is an early "cute-em-up", ehh, i don't know. I'll leave that one up to you guys.

Hey? Is anyone going to make a poll on this? I'm interested on everyone's opinion. If no one else is, then I'm going to. Just give the word and I'll start one.

I reject cute-em-up as a definition. There is shootemup, or not shootemup. Do R-Type, Salamander and Dominator fit in a seperate 'bio-alien-em-up' group? Do we have space-em-up? WW2-em-up? Why does 'cute' get special treatment?

[Ceph]

Yes, you are right. It's the game mechanics that matter, not the looks.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

I reject cute-em-up as a definition. There is shootemup, or not shootemup. Do R-Type, Salamander and Dominator fit in a seperate 'bio-alien-em-up' group? Do we have space-em-up? WW2-em-up? Why does 'cute' get special treatment?

'Cute' is also a matter of opinion. Personally, I find those fluffy penguins quite horrifying.

Seriously though, it rymes with 'shoot-em-up' and when people read it in a magazine they think "ho ho, a pun! A play on words, how clever!" Thats how buzz-words stick in people's minds. 'Bio-alien-em-up' just sounds dumb.

Oh and Contra = run-and-gun.

One of my other favourite games as a kid was Turrican. I always thought of this as a "platform shooter". I never, for one second, considered it to be of the same genre as R-Type and Salamander (or Robotron) and all that.
I think in the case of arguments like these, it's easier to think about what would make something not a shmup than what defines the shmup genre itself because more often than not, there's some stupid exception to the rule.
I've revised my previous point and would say that a situation where the player must manually negotiate a series of platforms in order to progress is what seperates a run-and-gun from a shmup.

And Centipede is a shmup.

[Turrican]

One of my other favourite games as a kid was Turrican. I always thought of this as a "platform shooter". I never, for one second, considered it to be of the same genre as R-Type and Salamander (or Robotron) and all that.

Quoted for truth.

[CMoon]

This makes all these debates really easy. Technically nothing before a certain point is a shmup, because shmups don't actually exist (in the full form we know them now)

Not so easy, when everyone still "feels" right to include the most archaic of them all, Space Invaders.

However, the point on debate is that "certain point"... I don't think someone seriously wants to exclude Defender and Galaga...

Well, we've discussed this before. Since I strongly believe proto-shmups are fair game on Shmups.com, it makes the debate easy. Now on the other hand, if someone is going to argue that protoshmups shouldn't be discussed here, well, perhaps they ought to closely examine this little picture of Malc:

[Blade]

Well, since we're on the topic, what are the extended definitions of what is and is not a shmup?

I'm not arguing about such things as Galaga per se, but for future reference, I think it would be worthwhile to give it some definition, or maybe even throw it in Wikipedia or something.