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Codex Gamicus
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Snake

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Snake is a video game first released during the mid 1970s in arcades and has maintained popularity since then, becoming something of a classic. After it became the standard pre-loaded game on Nokia phones in 1998, Snake found a massive audience.

The player controls a long, thin creature, resembling a snake, which roams around on a bordered plane, picking up food (or some other item), trying to avoid hitting its own tail or the "walls" that surround the playing area. Each time the snake eats a piece of food, its tail grows longer, making the game increasingly difficult. The user controls the direction of the snake's head (up, down, left, or right), and the snake's body follows. The player cannot stop the snake from moving while the game is in progress, and cannot make the snake go in reverse. However, Snake has had many variations since its release, depending on the game's platform. These variations involve the modification of certain rules e.g. the lethality of contact with walls.

History[ | ]

The Snake variety of games originated with the arcade game Blockade, released by Gremlin in 1976.[1] In 1977, Atari, Inc. released, as an unofficial port, the first home console version of the Blockade concept, titled Surround. Surround was one of the nine Atari 2600 (VCS) launch titles, and was also sold by Sears under the name Chase.

The first known personal computer version of Snake, titled Worm, was programmed in 1978 by P. Trefonas from the USA on the TRS-80 computer, 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 computers. A microcomputer port of Hustle was first written by P. Trefonas in 1979 and published by CLOAD magazine.[2] This was later released by Milton Bradley for the TI-99/4A in 1980.[3]

Some better-known versions include the Neopets example, which is known as "Meerca Chase". Its revised version is known as "Meerca Chase II". A popular variant called Nibbles was also included with MS-DOS for a period of time.

An analog joystick-controlled variant of Snake, called Anaconda, was included as a hidden minigame in TimeSplitters 2.

The version included on the Nokia N70 and other later model Nokia phones is a 3D version, with level goals. The Nokia version has a snake in it as well.

Snake on the BBC Micro[ | ]

File:SnakeBBCMicro.png

Snake by Computer Concepts on the BBC Micro

There were several versions of Snake on the BBC Micro. Snake by John Cox from Computer Concepts was different in that the snake was controlled using the left and right arrow keys relative to the direction it was heading in. The snake increases in speed as it gets longer, and there are no 'lives', making achieving a high score or reaching higher levels relatively difficult as one mistake means starting from the beginning.

Snake on Nokia phones[ | ]

Nokia is well known for putting Snake on the majority of their phones. Versions include:

  • Snake - The original, for monochrome phones. Graphics consisted of black squares, and it had 4 directions. An example of a phone with it installed is the Nokia 6110. It was programmed in 1997 by Taneli Armanto, a design engineer in Nokia.[4]
File:SnakeII Lvl4 Maze4.gif

Snake II screenshot, showing level 4 and maze 2.

  • Snake II - Included on monochrome phones. Snake improved to a snake pattern, introduction of bonus bugs, a 'cyclical' play area (where crossing through one boundary would have you appear on the opposite side) and mazes (obstacle walls placed within the play area). An example of a phone with it installed is the Nokia 3310.
  • Snake Xenzia - Included on present-day monochrome phones (and some cheaper color phones, such as the Nokia 1600). An example of a phone with it installed is the Nokia 1112
  • Snake EX - Included on color phones. Graphics improved to SNES quality. It supports multiplayer through Bluetooth and Infra-Red. An example of a phone with it installed is the Nokia 6260.
  • Snake EX2 - This is included in several Series40 handsets by Nokia.
  • Snakes - A 3D version. This game was designed for the N-Gage, developed by IOMO (published by Nokia). It featured multiplayer through Bluetooth. Graphics improved to basic PlayStation quality. Introduction of hex levels, etc. Later Nokia started giving this game pre-installed(without multiplayer feature) in its Nseries phones like N70, N73, N80, etc. Snakes can be downloaded from the Nokia support page's Games section and played on any S60 device.[5]
  • Snake III - A 3D version, different from Snakes in the fact that Snake III takes a more living snake approach, rather than the abstract feel of Snake. An example of a phone with it installed is the Nokia 3250. It is also available on the Nokia 5310, Nokia 5610 and the Nokia 6300. It also supports multiplayer modes via Bluetooth.
  • Snakes Subsonic - Sequel to Snakes, released on May 22, 2008 for the second generation N-Gage platform.

Snake on YouTube[ | ]

Snake can be played on YouTube videos that use the 2010 version of the player. When a video is selected, press the [left] key for two seconds. The game will appear and can be played in the videoscreen.[6]

Variants by platform[ | ]

  • Nokia Snake 1 - The original first snake game recreated again by the original creator for nokia s60
  • Worm and Hustle computer games, published by CLOAD, 1978 and 1979[2]
  • CGA-Snake - Late-Eighties version of Snake using Color Graphics Adapter technology
  • GL Snake - Very realistic three dimensional variant of snake (openGL | Glut)
  • Hustle - arcade game, TI-99/4A
  • HYPER-WURM - TRS-80
  • Light Cycle - Tron (fictional game) and its arcade implementation Tron
  • Need for Snake - Simple online Snake in JavaScript
  • Ophidia - Advanced JavaScript snake game with enemies, obstacles, and shooting
  • Nibbler - arcade version
  • Nibbles - MS-DOS (QBasic) some versions of suse linux
  • Snake - A snake game coded in Visual Basic 6 (with source code)
  • Plasmaworm - Microsoft Windows
  • Rattler Race - Microsoft Windows
  • Serpent 3D - First Person 'Eater' (openGL | Glut)
  • Several ZX Spectrum games, of which Laser Snaker is one example
  • Snafu - Mattel Intellivision
  • Snake - as a TIFF homebrew game on the Sony PlayStation Portable
  • Snake - BBC Micro
  • Snake - MSX
  • Snake - Texas Instruments TI-83 and TI-84 graphing calculators

Template:Computing platform requirements

References[ | ]

  1. ↑ blockade video game, gremlin ind, inc. (1976)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 http://brainless.hkc.free.fr/missing/Tandy%20Radio%20Shack%20TRS-80%20-%20Model%20Ihave.txt
  3. ↑ Retrogaming Times Monthly 7
  4. ↑ History of Nokia part 2: Snake | Nokia Conversations - The official Nokia Blog
  5. ↑ The Unofficial Nokia Gaming Blog: Snakes for S60 Download
  6. ↑ YouTube - YouTube Snake Gameplay
  7. ↑ Worm Of Bemer

External links[ | ]


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