A Centipede Emulator for the Atari 8bit/Commodore 64 by Norbert! [UPDATE]

Welcome to Centipede for the C64 as an emulator by Norbert. A game that was not only released as a vertical fixed shooter by Atari in 1980, but it also featured as a rather cheesy but nostalgic Pixel movie. A nod to a game in which you had to protect your garden against not just spiders and scorpions, but also a rather nasty splitting Centipede. To coincide with this bit of history, Saberman has provided some gameplay footage of the Centipede Emulator for the C64!

Here’s the latest from the dev. ” The arcade machine is based on a 6502 CPU and Atari’s POKEY sound chip. The game was later ported to many different hardware platforms up to today’s smartphone era. Since the nineties, arcade emulators like MAME can emulate the classics like Centipede on modern computers. This program is a Centipede emulator for the Commodore 64. The “emulation” of the arcade machine’s CPU is done directly by the 6510 processor of the C64, which just runs the original game program on the C64. The video and sound hardware of the arcade machine is simulated on the C64 by specific routines in Assembly language. In this way, the original game play is (more or less) exactly reproduced, with some major trade-offs, though, which had to be made due to the lower resolution and sprite and color capabilities of the C64″.

UPDATE : The Centipede Emulator which was previously announced for the C64, has since been released for the Atari XL/XE. As in the words of the creator ” The “emulation” of the arcade machine’s CPU is done directly by the 6502 processor of the Atari home computer, which just runs the original game program. The arcade machine uses the POKEY chip for sound effects. As the Atari 800XL also has a POKEY built in, the original sound effects are directly played by this chip. The video hardware of the arcade machine is simulated on the Atari 800XL by specific routines in assembly language. In this way, the original game play is (more or less) exactly reproduced, with some major trade-offs, though, which had to be made due to the limited graphics capabilities of the Atari 800XL compared to the arcade machine.

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