Boss Download: http://fraxyhq.net/uploader/index.php
Music: Be Aggressive! by DusK at Overclocked Remix: http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02741
Centipede Gear both looks cool and makes for a fun fight. The look and feel of the boss and its arena immediately made me think of the mine level from Gunstar Heroes, so it always seems appropriate to me to fight it while listening to a remixed version of the boss music from that stage. This giant insect-shaped boss scuttles its way across a confining tunnel and forces the player to dodge between its shifting legs as it moves across the screen after each attack phase. There is a small core on either side of Centipede Gear, but the two cores share a single healthbar. Even though it looked menacing, this boss really is pretty easy overall. Centipede Gear mostly attacks with a fluctuating spreadshot mixed with large energy orbs. Its attack changes each time it moves and the energy orbs generally come in a spread or come in pairs which home in on your ship and gradually shrink. It mixes things up near the end of the fight by shooting large spreads of destructible ring shots laced with a variation on the energy orbs which block your bullets, but the real threat from this attack comes in the form of an enormous horizontal laser which it charges up and can catch you by surprise if you are only paying attention to the area around your ship. For all its fancy attack patterns, the most danger Centipede Gear poses comes from the bullets it starts shooting out near the end while it moves across the screen; dodging between the legs while also finding a way to not get hit by these bullets in the process can be rather difficult. I do wish this boss’s attacks were a little more menacing, but the low difficulty doesn’t stop this fight from being entertaining.