History

Rollerpede is a single-player arcade shooter for the Commodore Amiga, programmed and scored by M. Donkin with graphics by D. Parker. It appeared as Amiga Computing's Game of the Month in June 1991 and was later included on Amiga Power's March 1992 cover disk. Its segmented enemy, mushroom field and player-zone movement place it in the line of Atari’s 1981 arcade game Centipede. Paladin Games released a revised edition in 1994.

Mission Objective

Destroy the Rollerpede and the other hostile creatures across 21 sectors. The Rollerpede winds through the mushroom grid towards the player zone; shooting a segment can divide it into independently moving sections.

Browser Controls

• Arrow Keys / W, A, S, D: Move the blaster within the player zone.
• Gamepad D-pad / Left Stick: Move the blaster; A, B, or Start fires. Hold a single Switch Joy-Con horizontally and use its right-hand button to fire.
• Space / Either Control Key / Left Click: Fire, start a game, or continue from a waiting screen.
• P: Pause / resume game.
• R: Restart / return to title screen.
• M: Toggle audio mode.
• F: Enter fullscreen display.

The original Amiga game used a joystick in controller port 2 for four-direction movement and firing; it did not provide keyboard or mouse movement. The keyboard, gamepad, and left-click mappings above are browser adaptations that feed the same original joystick input.

Enemies & Hazards

• Rollerpede: 20 points per destroyed segment.
• Walker: An invincible hazard.
• UFO: 1500 points when destroyed.
• Spider: Releases a bonus token when destroyed.
• Seeker: 3000 points when destroyed.

Bonus Tokens & Scoring

• Bonus Points: Adds points to the score.
• Firepower: Improves the blaster.
• Extra Man: Awards an additional blaster ship.
• Shield: Protects the blaster.
• Sector-End Mushrooms: Each remaining mushroom is cleared and adds 50 points.
• Starting Lives: Five blaster ships.