History of the snake game

The Nokia Snake game that so many people remember from school and long bus rides arrived on the Nokia 6110 around the end of 1997 (sources differ between late 1997 and early 1998), but the idea is about twenty years older. It started with Blockade, a 1976 arcade game, passed through home computers and DOS, and then reached millions of pockets on Nokia phones. Today the same simple rules (eat, grow, don't hit anything) run in any browser, including our free Snake game, with no download and no phone to charge.

1976: Blockade in the arcades

The first game in the Snake family is generally said to be Blockade, released in arcades in 1976 by Gremlin Industries. It wasn't quite the Snake people know. Two players each steered a line that left a solid trail behind it, and the aim was to make the other player crash into a wall or a trail first. There were no apples and no growing from food; the "snake" simply got longer as it moved.

What it did establish was the core tension that still makes Snake work: the thing you're building is also the thing most likely to kill you.

The 1980s and early 1990s: home computers and DOS

Through the late 1970s and 1980s, the idea spread to home computers and other arcade machines, under many names. Programmers liked it because it was simple to write: a grid, a list of squares for the body, and a rule that the tail moves when the head moves.

Many PC users first met it in the early 1990s as Nibbles, a sample game written in QBasic that came with MS-DOS. You steered a snake around a maze, eating numbers, and you could open the source code and change the rules yourself. For a generation of hobby programmers, it was one of the first programs they ever edited.

1997: the Nokia Snake game arrives

The version most people mean by "Snake" appeared on the Nokia 6110, which went on sale around the turn of 1997 to 1998. It was adapted for the phone by Taneli Armanto, a Nokia software engineer working on the user interface.

In interviews, Armanto has said the team had looked at putting Tetris on the phone first, and he even had a version working, but a licensing deal couldn't be agreed. Snake was the alternative, and it suited a phone surprisingly well:

• It needed only four directions, which the number keys (2, 4, 6 and 8) handled neatly.
• It worked on a tiny monochrome screen.
• A game could last thirty seconds or thirty minutes, perfect for a bus stop.

Nokia went on to include Snake, and later versions such as Snake II, on many of its phones in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Figures of 350 to 400 million phones are often quoted (as per Nokia and later press reports; the exact number isn't certain). Whatever it was, it's fair to say Snake was one of the first video games played by a huge number of people who never owned a games console.

Why Snake stuck

Snake has lasted because its rules fit in one sentence, yet it gets harder all by itself. Every apple makes the snake longer and the board smaller. There's no story to learn, no levels to unlock and no buttons beyond steering. That simplicity is also why it became a first project for so many people learning to program.

A few habits from the Nokia days still help today: hugging the walls while you're short, sweeping the board in rows, and following your tail when you're unsure. We collected them in our Snake game tips.

Snake today: in the browser

You no longer need an old phone to play. Our version keeps the classic rules and swaps the keypad for controls that suit keyboards and touch screens. It also remembers up to two quick turns, so tight U-turns work:

Then (classic phone versions)	Now (our free Snake game)
Number keys 2, 4, 6, 8	Arrow keys or WASD; swipe or tap arrows on a phone
A speed or level setting	Slow, Normal or Fast, quickening every five apples
Walls, or a mode without walls on some versions	Choose Walls or Wrap around
Best score on that one phone	Best score per speed and edge setting, saved in your browser

The board is 17 squares by 15, the snake starts three squares long, and the game even has an ending most people never see: fill all 255 squares and it congratulates you for filling the board.

Other classics from the same era

If Snake brings back memories, a few more games from the same years run in the browser too:

• Brick Breaker, in the tradition of the 1970s paddle-and-ball games. Our post on Breakout's history and tips tells that story.
• Minesweeper, the logic game many people first played on a family PC. See our post on classic Windows games.

Play classic Snake now

No charger, no keypad, no download. Press Start in the free Snake game and see if your thumbs remember. It runs in your browser on a phone, tablet or computer.