The Nokia Snake Game
Pre-installed on the Nokia 6110 in 1997, Snake became the first video game for hundreds of millions of people. This is its story, and where to relive it.
One engineer, 400 million phones
In 1997, Nokia engineer Taneli Armanto was asked to put a game on the upcoming Nokia 6110. Working within brutal constraints - a tiny monochrome screen, a numeric keypad and almost no memory - he chose the decades-old snake concept and rebuilt it for one-thumb play. The result shipped pre-installed and spread with every handset Nokia sold. By the era's end, an estimated 400 million devices carried Snake, an install base most modern blockbusters never touch.
Snake was not just popular; it was formative. For a huge share of the planet it was the first video game they ever played, and it demonstrated to the entire industry that phones were a games platform. Mobile gaming, today the largest sector of the games business, traces a straight line back to it.
The 862-point perfect game
The original Nokia Snake has a hard ceiling: 862 points, achieved by filling the whole screen with the snake without crashing. It sounds simple and is anything but; the endgame requires threading a snake through corridors exactly one cell wide, formed by its own body. Very few players ever saw it, which is exactly what made the legend.
Snake II and beyond
Snake II (2000) added mazes, bonus items and wrap-through tunnels on newer handsets, followed by colour and 3D experiments in later years. Purists mostly stayed loyal to the originals, and the plain versions remain the most fondly remembered. Our Snake 2 game is a browser tribute to that leap: levels, rising speed and rotating obstacle layouts.
Where to play Nokia-style snake today
- Right here: our Classic Snake keeps the original rules: four directions, walls that kill, one apple at a time.
- The full jump: Infinite Snake adds the wrap-around edges that Snake II's tunnels hinted at.
- Original hardware: secondhand Nokia handsets still work, and their batteries famously outlive empires.
Curious how deep the phenomenon goes? See our full snake game history and fun facts pages.