Yes, playing "slow" will generally take longer. As you're discovering, the ultimate result of playing slow leads to the blob strategy. This means that you have to have a detailed understanding of how many mushrooms to keep in the lower 12 rows of the screen to prevent the fleas from falling.if i play conservatively (slow) at first, i can extend the game for awhile, until about 100k, but this is a rather painstaking, and time consuming way to play..however, it usually ends up deteroriating as the spider speeds up, and the fleas keep falling.
..but if i play fast (let the fleas come out)...the game picks up, and i get better practice on the full screen method, but i end up with a lower score, and die faster..
In general the poisoned mushrooms make it easier, especially when you start getting into the higher scores (past 200K-250K). The reason is that if you're lettng fleas fall, eventually the top part of the screen gets nearly completely filled with mushrooms, and that will caused the heads to drop through the screen quickly. The problem is the once they start getting close to the bottom, you have the danger of the side feed starting. With poisoned mushrooms, they drop from the top of the screen just as fast, but they continue all the way to the bottom and then start travelling UP. This usually gives you a few extra seconds to clear them out before they start travelling back down to activate the side feed.this brings up another point..
i'll admit, having a screen of poisoned mushrooms can make it a lot easier to clear off the centipede/heads at times...at other times it makes it worse..
i think dying at the appropriate time, can help, by resetting the poisoned mushrooms..
any thoughts on that?
Early on in the game, then it's slightly different because there will be relatively few mushrooms in the top part of the screen and it will take the centipede a long time to weave its way down. It may occasionally help to have a strategic death here or there, but after a certain point it probably won't work that well.
To properly do these flea-prevention strategies, you have to learn how many mushrooms to keep in the bottom 12 rows, and also what scores things change at. It starts at 5, then I think at 60K it jumps to 9 (or maybe 12), and at 120K it jumps to something like 20. You should be able to figure it out by using "pause" when watching a recording. At some point, it increases by 1 for every 10K of score. In my 560K game, I checked (using pause) at 460K and I needed 50 mushrooms to keep the fleas from falling. At 540K, I needed 58.but i still haven't figured out the 'sweet' spot for the mushrooms....even if i manage to keep the fleas away for awhile, they always end up winning.. (not to mention the spider nailing me)..
The other part of this is the spider. He travels through the bottom 12 rows to start, but by 160K he only travels through the bottom 7 rows. At 860K, he goes back to 12.
Yes, I'll get to those soonanyways. you should try some of the other clones, especially the 'super-centipede' from the arcade classics, it might give you more of a challenge...
i've put up other high scores on the other revisions, and bootlegs (like 'magic worm')..hope to see you there also..