Just after getting home from work this evening, I went into the basement (my office/gameroom/refuge) to fax some paperwork to somebody. While waiting for the fax to send, my son Nate came down and hung out with me.

He pulls Centipede out of my Dreamcast collection rack and asks if we can play it. Now, the game was still in it's shrinkwrap; I've never played it before tonight. (Sadly, I have a lot of games like that.)

So we agree that after his bath, assuming he's good and there's time, we can play games before he goes to sleep.

Now, firstly, he was surprisingly good at the game considering his age and lack of experience. Secondly, we played the 'Adventure' mode, which I found somewhat charming. I never really liked Centipede all that much to begin with, and pretty much always assume modern remakes of classic games will be lousy. I only played briefly, but the adventure mode Centipede seemed pretty good.

In the lower-left corner of the screen, though, was an indicator I didn't figure out. I quickly skimmed through the instrucitons and didn't see it explained there either, though I could have missed it.

The inidicator looks a little like a centipede-shaped progress gauge, or health meter, or something like that. And somewhere on Mission 2, after I trigger something, a bunch of scattered red 'somethings' appear with it, along the bottom of the screen.

Anybody ever play Dreamcast Centipede and know what I'm talking about?