An Oral History of ‘Snake’ on Nokia | Hacker News Reader

An Oral History of ‘Snake’ on Nokia

melmagazine.com

90 pointsandrelaszlo26 comments

Strange there is no mention of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibbles_(video_game) (released 1991 and present on all MSDOS after 5 and early windows machines), probably itself paying homage to https://www.mobygames.com/game/rock-olas-nibbler * (1982). MobyGames' list of earlier Snake variants at https://www.mobygames.com/game-group/snake-variants/offset,1... attributes oldest position to Taito's 1977 arcade game Hustle https://www.arcade-history.com/?n=hustle&page=detail&id=1950... which also received a TI-99/4A port https://www.videogamehouse.net/hustle.html (1981).

Or Gremlin Industries' 1976 "Blockade" which invented the Tron light-cycles genre, and probably inspired the Snake game genre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_(video_game)

That is in the article

I remember copying the code out for a Snake variant from a Commodore 64 magazine in '83 or '84 - back in the days when they would publish source code for things in each issue - and it made Snake a craze at my country Australia Primary school where we had 8 '64s sharing a single networked floppy drive. It also made me, the biggest nerd at the school, the cool guy... for a few days..

Similar story at our school in Sydney ... mid 1990s we had a 2P (one keyboard) multiplayer snake hacking contest. I implemented flamethrowers and mines in my version, which enjoyed relative popularity.

i grew up playing Serpentine (1982) on my awesome vic-20

There is a mention now it seems.

I remember playing Worm[0] on the school’s RM Nimbus[1] in the early 90s

[0]http://xbattlestation.com/xbs/worm/worm.html [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RM_Nimbus

Nibbler (1982) is directly mentioned in the article.

>"The game Snake existed before 1995. It first arrived in 1976 as an arcade game called Blockade and spawned several clones from there. Whether it was Nibbler, Worm or Rattler Race, the basic concept was consistent."

There oughta be an anthology of everyday fixtures. This essay can sit next to an account of the Jazz design (https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2015/06/...). Or, at least, the history of SkiFree.

I can think of two podcasts along these lines; "99 Percent Invisible" and "20,000 Hertz"

I distinctly remember thinking in 2001 that being able to play Nibbles on a cell phone was the apex of technology and it would be tough to get better than that.

Want some fun? Play Breakout and Snake at the same time! :)

First, take the Breakout code from here:

http://labs.phaser.io/edit.html?src=src\games\breakout\break...

And paste it into the Snake game here:

http://labs.phaser.io/edit.html?src=src\games\snake\part7.js

I discovered this trick when I introduced a classroom full of kids to PhaserIO, and happened to notice an 8-year old playing both games simultaneously .. I asked him how, and he said "I just copied the game code together" .. NEAT! :)

It still comes with the latest Nokia feature phones. I just bought a Nokia 3310 for my father, and it has a fancy color version of Snake built in.

> I just bought a Nokia 3310

To be clear, you bought new Nokia 3310 (2017) by HMD Global, not old-school Nokia 3310 (2000) by Nokia Oyj, right?

They said it has a color screen

It's possible that the game is in color but rendered on a monochrome screen

edit: I mean, it obviously isn't

For me, «Snake» is 2nd «Tetris».

But I much more impressed when got Nokia 3230[0] with preinstalled «Agent V»[1,2] — AR mobile game which, think, is real predecessor of «Pokémon GO».

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3230

[1] http://www.nicolasnova.net/pasta-and-vinegar/2006/07/06/agen...

[2] https://pikabu.ru/story/agent_v_4349670

My friends and I got very into Ingress [0] back when they only had 8 levels. Now that was literally a predecessor of Pokemon Go; I hear they used the portal data from the former to choose pokemon locations in the latter. Ingress seemed a lot more fun because you could be truly competitive, destroy other players' constructions and gain territory in your home area. There was even a running global count of how much territory each of the two factions had. That said my Pokemon career began and ended with Yellow on the game boy.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game)

Ingress was a hot thing while I was in university. We were roaming the streets at night, equipped with smartphones and powerbanks and were looking out for members of the other party, so we had enough time to build up solid links all across the town. Great time!

How can someone confuse a Centipede clone (“Wiggle Worm”, an Apple 2 game that’s the subject of the video embedded in the center of the article) with Snake? I’m just gonna hope that’s a cut-and-paste error.

Play one here

https://www.google.com/search?q=snake+game

For those avoiding Google, this is an easter egg and not a suggestion to look for websites with Snake on Google.

Love my Nokia Brick phones. I was so bored as a teenager I mastered snake and was able to dodge anything on a Nokia or a TI-83.

Would love to see a similar article about Space Impact. Was it the same guy?

Good old memories

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