DID YOU KNOW

The first Snake game was published by Nokia for its monochrome phones and introduced on the Nokia 6110. The phone shipped with three embedded games: Memory, Logic and Snake. Snake was the only game that was playable or considered fun by phone users. It was programmed by Taneli Armanto in 1997.

As Finnish Games historian Juho Kuorikoski tells it, “Snake’s humble beginnings began when Nokia were developing a new Operating System for their phones and there was space in it they thought could be filled with something interesting.

The company’s Development Division got their hands on a a Danish smartphone that had a simple Tetris variant on it and decided to emulate it using their own product and game.” The story goes that Armanto saw a snake game his cousin had made for the PC that seemed perfect for mobile.

Scaling Up
In 2015 Armanto worked on a new version of the old Snake game partnering with Finnish
game studio Rumilus Design to create an updated version of the classic that they’ve called ‘Snake Rewind’ and while there have been many Snake clones over the years, this was the first one where the former Nokia engineer was involved.

The new version added-in new graphics and game play features, it launched on 14 May 2015 on Android, iOS and the now discontinued Windows Phone (WP). It featured 10 levels, unlocked new levels and required a player complete three missions. The old game was modernised by changing the fruit and also included items such as power-ups and multipliers.

Scaling Back
It seems that art is now imitating life, in January this year Microsoft announced that support for Windows 10 Mobile would end on December 10, 2019 and advised that Windows 10 Mobile users should migrate to iOS or Android phones.

And just like in the natural world, snakes shed their skin to allow for further growth or to
remove parasites that may have attached themselves to the old skin. It begs the question then of whether a third stretch and grow iteration in collaboration with Armanto might be
on the cards for this retro classic’s future. Only time will tell.

Image Credits: Snakeplaygame / Snake Rewind on Facebook

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