Who doesn't know the game Snake? It's a classic game where the player has to navigate a snake on a squared field, with the aim to eat as much food as possible. With every piece of food the snake grows and thus gets longer. Touching the walls of the field or the snakes own tail ends the game. That's the gameplay of one of the most successful mobile phone game ever - ready to play it on the N9?The history of Snake the game
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| First known Snake game (1979) |
"Snake" has a long history, which goes back to 1979. This was the year where F. Seger developed the probably first version of the game running on a TRS-80, which was one of the first home computers next to the Apple II and Commodore PET 2001.
Seger's game, called "Hyper-Worm" ran with a display resolution of 128x48 pixels (the newest iPad has a 2048x1536 pixel display) and was quiet tricky to play.
Another famous version of Snake was "Nibbles" which was for several years part of MS-DOS and therefore available on most computers during the 90'.
The version which most people know, are certainly the ones of Nokia. Snake 1 was programmed in 1997 by Taneli Armanto, a Nokia design engineer. Pre-installed on Nokia 6110 and Nokia 8810 with very simple graphics and gameplay: A snake made out of several black blocks had to eat black blocks - simple isn't' it?
Because of the games huge popularity, Nokia introduced Snake II when the Nokia 3310 got published. Several improvements made it into the game like "bonus-bugs", levels and open walls. Since then (until 2008) Nokia released about six other versions of Snake, three of them with 3D graphics. But all of them couldn't keep up with the success of the first two versions.
Snake today and on the N9
Even though Nokia hasn't been working any more on a new Snake game, it is still alive on several platforms.
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| Two different generations, one game |
If Android, iOS, Symbian or Meego Harmattan (N9) - all of them have at least one replicate of the classic game. While some developers tried to copy the old gameplay, others created version which barely have anything in common with the original.
In Nokia Store for N9, there are 4 different Snake games available. On the picture to the right you see a N9 running Snake by MMMOOO. This version is our favorite, since it copies the original Snake game very well and even comes with a Nokia 1100 interface (although that phone has originally Snake II pre-installed). Therefore you need to use the virtual number-buttons to play the game. Number 2 up, 6 right, 8 down, 4 left and 5 to pause the game.
For those who like it different, should have a look at the 3 other games available for Nokia N9.
First one is Snake by Kunal Parmar. The graphics are very old-style (picture on the left) and maybe not everyones taste. But the gameplay is great and with different bugs to catch and various levels it comes close to Snake II by Nokia. A little advice: Yellow and green bugs are healthy and make your snake grow, but avoid the red ones or your snake will loose a part of its tail. There are no navigation buttons in this version - just tap the left side of the screen to turn left, lower part to move down and so on...
The last two games couldn't be more different from each other: One with colorful, real-looking graphics (Snake Touch by Digital Footmark) and the other one abstract in black&white (Snake by Aleksey Moshkin). Both are good games with several levels to play. The black&white version has a very interesting style and many different game-modes. One for example is, to eat fruits faster than bugs which walk over the play field. Unfortunately controls aren't done that well in this game and you need to get used to them.
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| Colorful graphics and fun levels / Abstract graphics and many game-modes |
So now nothings stands in the way to revive Snake on your Nokia N9! Enjoy all the variations of the traditional Nokia game.
Which one of those 4 version do you like most?
Please leave us a comment and share what you think.
