Why is my Millipede so insanely difficult?

trickman

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So, I get a Millipede and get it working, get new trackball parts and fix it up to be playable. Now that I can play it properly I dig into the game. Turns out it's really difficult...harder than I remember, so I change and make sure the dip switch settings are on Easy Spider, Easy Beetle, and Easy Millipede head. Everything else is default. I turn on the test switch to confirm these settings, then go into the game. It's still amazingly difficult. Bees drop a solid line of mushrooms all the way to the bottom, leaving only one space for me to get underneath them whenever they appear. Every time I clear the full Millipede, a solid row of mushrooms appears on the top and moves down after another Millipede is cleared. Shooting a Beetle does the same thing...leaves another row on the top. By the time I'm about 17,000 pts, 1/4 of the screen is filled with mushrooms, and the barrage of Bees that come down all at once leave solid trails of shrooms (no spaces in between) that are hard to clear. Am I missing a major setting here? Any suggestions?

Look at the default settings on this game of Millipede (not mine). I wish MY game was this way, but mine's much harder.
 
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it's just a hard game. Personally i like it because of the difficulty. I only really worry about keeping the bottom of the screen clear of mushrooms. Other than that I kill everything on the screen. Unlike centipede where you can sit on the first screen for a long time if you like and simply shoot the stray centipede bits and the spider to build up points.
 
it's just a hard game. Personally i like it because of the difficulty. I only really worry about keeping the bottom of the screen clear of mushrooms. Other than that I kill everything on the screen. Unlike centipede where you can sit on the first screen for a long time if you like and simply shoot the stray centipede bits and the spider to build up points.

True. It is a difficult game. That video shows it, but mine is much more difficult than what that video shows, which kind of takes away the fun for me. I'd love it to "ramp up" to being really difficult instead of being that tough almost right away. Maybe I'll have to shoot some video of mine in action for people to fully grasp what I'm talking about.
 
BITD I mostly played Centipede. I remember when Millipede came out because it didn't last long because it was so difficult. I only played it a couple of times because I was dead in under a minute. I never truly appreciated it until I got a Millipede locally and now I actually like it better and play it way more than Centipede. After you have played Millipede for a while, Centipede seems boring. Perhaps there is a problem with the board. The Millipede I got the other day was still giving me 2 men even though I had the dip switch set to 3. Once I put in the Multipede kit it was fine.
 
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I love the difficulty. Millipede is far and away one of the most "manic" and inspired games for me. Black Widow at the later levels comes close. I play on default TG settings and start at the 30k bonus level. I thought my score of 180k was pretty good until a friend came over and posted 235k on his 4th or 5th try after not playing since bitd....which was humorous since I warned him to try not to hurt himself chasing my score ;) I've got the multipede kit but that's for kids or guests. I cannot see myself going back to centipede unless its for a nostalgia trip.

What kind of scores are you getting?

Tom
 
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BITD I mostly played Centipede. I remember when Millipede came out because it didn't last long because it was so difficult. I only played it a couple of times because I was dead in under a minute. I never truly appreciated it until I got a Millipede locally and now I actually like it better and play it way more than Centipede. After you have played Millipede for a while, Centipede seems boring. Perhaps there is a problem with the board. The Millipede I got the other day was still giving me 2 men even though I had the dip switch set to 3. Once I put in the Multipede kit it was fine.

That's one thing that crossed my mind. The game was reporting English once but the language was clearly German. I had to play with the dipswitches on and off a couple of times before it kicked in to English. I may end up doing the multipede thing, but probably later on. Do you think reseating the CPU chip would help?

As for scores, I'm not even making the leaderboard yet. It's too damn hard.
 
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After messing around with all my dip switches and giving up. I decided to search around some more and I found some interesting info. According to this multipede trouble shooting guide (link below), I may have a bad P1 (pokey chip) on my board. One of the symptoms is: "Mushrooms are in straight line or spider movement is not random" It shows up in my test screen as a bad P1 (If the left-hand side of the test screen shows P0 or P1, or both, you have bad pokey chips). I ordered one from MikesArcade.com. Hopefully that will clear up the crazy amount of mushrooms problem. I'll update here when it arrives and I get it installed.

milli-badpokey.png


Here is a link to the page: http://www.brasington.org/arcade/products/cm/trouble.shtml
 
Fast Millipede

I think you are right...your Millipede is on sterioids. I have a Millipede, but it's a bit slower. Seems like yours is sped up a notch. Good luck with the chiip change.
Marv
 
Thanks. And I still want to take a short vid. of the insane amount of mushrooms that are on the screen.

I wonder if arcade operators ever had that problem when the game was in it's prime, or if customers complained that the game they were playing for so long just got a lot more difficult? Maybe it took 20+ years for those chips to go bad, and by that time nobody cared? Who knows.
 
Thanks for posting this, I guarantee it will help someone troubleshoot in the future. I am curious to hear if your chip replacement actually fixes the issue.
 
UPDATE! Yes, the pokey chip (P1) was bad, and it affects gameplay. I replaced it and it works fine now. Everything is normal!

Since it's not already covered, I'm working on a short vid to serve as a tutorial for this very problem in hopes that it will help others seeking out what to do in this situation.
 
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