
Snake is a
sub-genre
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
of
action video game
An action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes a large variety of sub-genres, such as fighting games, beat 'em ups, shooter games, and platform gam ...
s where the player maneuvers the end of a growing line, often themed as a snake. The player must keep the snake from colliding with both other obstacles and itself, which gets harder as the snake lengthens. The concept originated in the 1976 two-player
arcade video game ''
Blockade'' from
Gremlin Industries
Gremlin Industries was an American arcade game manufacturer active from 1971 to 1983, based in San Diego, California. Following its acquisition by Sega in 1978, the company was known as Sega/Gremlin or Gremlin/Sega. The company's name was subseq ...
, and the ease of implementation has led to hundreds of versions (some of which have the word ''snake'' or ''worm'' in the title) for many platforms. 1982's ''
Tron'' arcade game, based on the film, includes snake gameplay for the single-player
Light Cycle segment. After a variant was preloaded on
Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...
mobile phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...
s in 1998, there was a resurgence of interest in snake games as it found a larger audience.
Gameplay
The original ''Blockade'' from 1976 and its many clones are two-player games. Viewed from a top-down perspective, each player controls a "snake" with a fixed starting position and which continually moves forward, growing longer. It must be steered left, right, up, and down to avoid hitting walls and the body of either snake. The player who survives the longest wins. A single-player version of the concept has one or more snakes under AI control, as in the light cycles segment of the ''
Tron'' arcade game.
The most common single-player variant is that the players snake is of a certain length, so the tail also moves, and with every item "eaten" by the head of the snake the snake gets longer. ''
Snake Byte
''Snake Byte'' is video game written by Chuck Sommerville for the Apple II and published by Sirius Software in 1982. The game is a single-player variant of the snake concept. That same year, ''Snake Byte'' was released for the Atari 8-bit famil ...
'' has the snake eating apples. ''
Nibbler
A nibbler, or nibblers,Jeffery Zurschmeide Automotive Welding: A Practical Guide 2009 - Page 26 "Nibblers make a ragged cut and also leave thousands of little sheetmetal nibbles all over your shop. ... Power shears are the best tool going for cut ...
'' has the snake eating abstract objects in a maze.
History

The ''Snake'' design dates back to the
arcade game
An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily games of skill and include arcade v ...
''
Blockade'',
developed and published by
Gremlin
A gremlin is a mischievous folkloric creature invented at the beginning of the 20th century to originally explain malfunctions in aircraft and later in other machinery and processes and their operators. Depictions of these creatures vary widely ...
in 1976. It was cloned as ''
Bigfoot Bonkers
''Bigfoot Bonkers'' is an arcade game for two players released by Meadows Games in 1976 in video gaming, 1976. It is a clone of ''Blockade (video game), Blockade'', the first of what would later be called Snake (video game), snake games, release ...
'' the same year. In 1977,
Atari, Inc.
Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari was a key player in the formation of the video arcade and video game industry.
Based primarily around the Sunny ...
released two ''Blockade''-inspired titles: the arcade game ''
Dominos
Dominoes is a family of tile-based games played with gaming pieces, commonly known as dominoes. Each domino is a rectangular tile, usually with a line dividing its face into two square ''ends''. Each end is marked with a number of spots (also ca ...
'' and Atari VCS game ''
Surround''.
''Surround'' was one of the nine Atari VCS launch titles in the US and was sold by
Sears under the name ''Chase''. That same year, a similar game was launched for the
Bally Astrocade
The ''Bally'' ''Astrocade'' (also known as ''Bally Arcade'' or initially as ''Bally ABA-1000'') is a second-generation home video game console and simple computer system designed by a team at Midway, at that time the videogame division of Bally. ...
as ''Checkmate''.
The first known
home computer version,which is titled ''Worm'', was programmed in 1978 by
Peter Trefonas
Peter Trefonas (born 1958) is a retired DuPont Fellow (a senior scientist) at DuPont, where he had worked on the development of electronic materials. He is known for innovations in the chemistry of photolithography, particularly the development ...
for the
TRS-80
The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of '' ...
,
and published by ''CLOAD'' magazine in the same year. This was followed shortly afterwards with versions from the same author for the
Commodore PET and
Apple II
The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...
. A clone of the ''Hustle'' arcade game, itself a clone of ''Blockade'', was written by Peter Trefonas in 1979 and published by ''CLOAD''.
An authorized version of ''Hustle'' was published by
Milton Bradley for the
TI-99/4A in 1980. The single-player ''
Snake Byte
''Snake Byte'' is video game written by Chuck Sommerville for the Apple II and published by Sirius Software in 1982. The game is a single-player variant of the snake concept. That same year, ''Snake Byte'' was released for the Atari 8-bit famil ...
'' was published in 1982 for Atari 8-bit computers, Apple II, and VIC-20; a snake eats apples to complete a level, growing longer in the process. In ''Snake'' for the
BBC Micro (1982), by Dave Bresnen, the snake is controlled using the left and right arrow keys relative to the direction it is heading in. The snake increases in speed as it gets longer, and there is only one life.
''
Nibbler
A nibbler, or nibblers,Jeffery Zurschmeide Automotive Welding: A Practical Guide 2009 - Page 26 "Nibblers make a ragged cut and also leave thousands of little sheetmetal nibbles all over your shop. ... Power shears are the best tool going for cut ...
'' (1982) is a single-player arcade game where the snake fits tightly into a maze, and the gameplay is faster than most snake designs. Another single-player version is part of the 1982 ''
Tron'' arcade game, themed with light cycles. It reinvigorated the snake concept, and many subsequent games borrowed the light cycle theme.
Starting in 1991, ''
Nibbles'' was included with
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
for a period of time as a
QBasic
QBasic is an integrated development environment (IDE) and interpreter for a variety of dialects of BASIC which are based on QuickBASIC. Code entered into the IDE is compiled to an intermediate representation (IR), and this IR is immediately ex ...
sample program. In 1992, ''
Rattler Race
''Microsoft Entertainment Pack'' , also known as ''Windows Entertainment Pack'' or simply ''WEP'' , is a collection of 16-bit casual computer games for Windows. There were four Entertainment Packs released between 1990 and 1992. These games w ...
'' was released as part of the second ''
Microsoft Entertainment Pack''. It adds enemy snakes to the familiar apple-eating gameplay.
Later versions
''
Serpent
Serpent or The Serpent may refer to:
* Snake, a carnivorous reptile of the suborder Serpentes
Mythology and religion
* Sea serpent, a monstrous ocean creature
* Serpent (symbolism), the snake in religious rites and mythological contexts
* Serp ...
'' (1990) is a snake game for the
Game Boy
The is an 8-bit fourth generation handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989, in North America later the same year, and in Europe in late 1990. It was designed by the same ...
.
''Meerca Chase'' is a snake game available on
Neopets.
''
Slither.io
''Slither.io'' (stylized as ''slither.io'') is a multiplayer online video game available for iOS, Android, and web browsers, developed by Steve Howse. Players control an avatar resembling a snake, which consumes multi-colored pellets, both fro ...
'' (2016) is a multiplayer interpretation of ''Snake.''
In 2017, Google released a version of the game as an
easter egg, whenever the phrases "snake", "play snake", "snake game" and "snake video game" are typed.
Nokia phones
Nokia puts ''Snake'' on the majority of their phones:
*''Snake'' – The first published by Nokia, for
monochrome
A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochrom ...
phones. It was programmed in 1997 by Taneli Armanto of Nokia and introduced on the
Nokia 6110.
*''Snake II'' – Included on monochrome phones such as the
Nokia 3310 from 2000.
*''Snake Xenzia'' – Included on later-model monochrome phones (and most cheaper colour phones, such as the
Series 30
The Series 30, often shortened as S30, is a software platform and application user interface created by Nokia for its entry level mobile phones, lower than Series 40. S30 phones are not capable of running Java apps. In 2014, Microsoft acquired ...
and
Series 30+ budget mobile devices).
*''Snake EX'' – Included on colour phones. First introduced with the
Nokia 9290 Communicator
The Nokia 9210 Communicator is a third-generation Communicator series smartphone produced by Nokia, announced on 21 November 2000 and released in June 2001. It greatly improved on the second generation Nokia 9110 Communicator, providing a colour ...
in 2002. It supports multiplayer through
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...
and
Infra-Red
Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...
.
*''Snake EX2'' – Introduced with the
Nokia 3100
The Nokia 3100 is a triband-GSM mobile phone announced on 17 June 2003 as an entry-level phone from Nokia and released in September 2003, designed primarily for the newer generation of marketing audience.
The Nokia 3100 was developed from the N ...
in 2003 and included in several
Series 40 handsets.
*''
Snakes
Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joi ...
'' – A 3D version designed for the
N-Gage in 2005. It featured multiplayer through
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...
. Later Nokia started preinstalling it (without multiplayer) on some
Nseries smartphones like
N70,
N73,
N80, etc. It can be downloaded from Nokia support pages and played on any S60 device.
*''Snake III'' – A 3D version, different from ''Snakes''. ''Snake III'' takes a more living snake approach, rather than the abstract feel of ''Snakes''. An example of a phone with it installed is the
Nokia 3250
The Nokia 3250 (code-named Thunder) is a smartphone running Symbian OS v9.1 ( S60 3rd Edition), announced on 26 September 2005. It features a unique 'twist' design that transforms the traditional phone keypad into a camera (90° CW/CCW) and dedi ...
from 2005, and it supports multiplayer modes via
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...
.
*''Snakes Subsonic'' - Sequel to ''
Snakes
Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joi ...
'', released on May 22, 2008 for
N-Gage 2.0
The N-Gage service (also referred to as N-Gage 2.0) was a mobile gaming platform from Nokia that was available for several Nokia smartphones running on S60 ( Symbian). N-Gage provided numerous games with 3D graphics into an application featur ...
.
*''Snake Xenzia (2017)'' - First released on the
Nokia 3310.
*''Snake (2017)'' - Released with
Facebook Messenger (2017)
Legacy
In 1996, ''
Next Generation
Next Generation or Next-Generation may refer to:
Publications and literature
* ''Next Generation'' (magazine), video game magazine that was made by the now defunct Imagine Media publishing company
* Next Generation poets (2004), list of young ...
'' ranked it number 41 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", citing the need for both quick reactions and forethought. In lieu of a title they listed it as "Snake game" in quotes.
On November 29, 2012, the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York City announced that the Nokia port of Snake was one of 40 games that the curators wished to add to the museum's collection in the future.
References
External links
List of snake-like gamesTraining AI to play snake game
{{DEFAULTSORT:Snake (Video Game)
Mobile games
Windows games
Linux games
Snake video games
TRS-80 games
Casual games
Nokia games
Video games about reptiles