The History of the Snake Game
From a two-player arcade cabinet in 1976 to Nokia phones and massive io arenas, the simple "don't hit yourself" idea has lasted nearly 50 years.
Who invented snake? The first snake game was Blockade, an arcade game released by Gremlin Industries in 1976. The best-known version is Snake on Nokia phones, programmed by Taneli Armanto for the Nokia 6110 in 1997–98.
Timeline
- 1976
Blockade
Gremlin's arcade game was a two-player duel. Each player steered a line that left a solid trail, and the first to crash lost. Atari's Surround (1977) brought the same idea home on the Atari 2600.
- 1978–1982
Worm and Nibbler
Home-computer versions such as Worm (1978, TRS-80) added the idea of eating food to grow. Rock-Ola's arcade game Nibbler (1982) was one of the first games with a nine-digit score counter.
- 1991
QBasic Nibbles
Microsoft included Nibbles, a snake game written in QBasic, with MS-DOS 5.0. Many people who learned to program in the 1990s first read its source code.
- 1997–1998
Nokia Snake
Taneli Armanto programmed Snake for the Nokia 6110. It was preinstalled on hundreds of millions of Nokia phones and became one of the most-played games ever. Play a Nokia-style version.
- 2000
Snake II
The Nokia 3310 shipped Snake II, with mazes, bonus bugs and levels where the snake could pass through the screen edge.
- 2016
Slither.io
Steve Howse's Slither.io turned snake into a massively multiplayer browser game with free 360° movement, and kicked off the wave of ".io" games. See games like Slither.io.
- Today
Browser snake
HTML5 canvas lets snake run instantly in any browser. Google Search has its own playable snake, and sites like this one offer classic, no-walls, two-player and io-style modes with no download.
Blockade: the first snake arcade game
Blockade (Gremlin Industries, 1976) is the arcade game the snake genre comes from. Two players each steered an arrow that left a solid line behind it, using four direction buttons. The aim was to survive longer than your opponent without crashing into a wall, your own line or theirs. There was no food yet. Growth was automatic, and that made every game end. You can play the same duel today in 2 player snake.
What game is snake from?
Snake isn't a spin-off of one game. It's a genre. The idea started with Blockade in 1976. Eating food to grow came from early home-computer versions, and most people know it from Nokia's Snake, preinstalled on Nokia phones from 1997–98.
Why snake has lasted
Snake has one rule that anyone gets in five seconds: don't run into yourself. But every food you eat makes the board harder, so the challenge grows with you. It needs only four directions, which is why it fit on a 1970s arcade cabinet, a 1990s phone keypad and a phone touchscreen today.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Snake (video game genre)
- Wikipedia: Blockade (video game)
- Wikipedia: Slither.io