🐍 Snake — play the classic free online

Snake's DNA goes back to Blockade (Gremlin, 1976), a two-player arcade game where each player left a growing wall behind them — crash first and you lose. The idea mutated through decades of "nibbles" and "worm" variants on home computers (many people met it as QBasic's Nibbles in 1991).

Then came the version that conquered Earth: in 1997, Taneli Armanto, a design engineer at Nokia, built Snake into the Nokia 6110. Preinstalled on hundreds of millions of practically indestructible phones, it became — by installed base — one of the most-played video games in history, all steered with a numeric keypad. For a generation, "my high score on Snake" was the first gaming brag that fit in a pocket.

Our cabinet keeps the sacred rules (the tail tip you're about to vacate is legal to move into — real Snake players know) and adds the arcade dressing: phosphor-green CRT glow, level-ups every five apples, and a decaying bonus fruit that punishes hesitation.

Steer with arrows or WASD, or swipe anywhere on a phone. Turns buffer two deep, so fast flick-turns land. Apples grow you by three segments; every fifth apple levels you up and speeds the game; the gold fruit is worth big points that tick away — grab it early. Walls and your own body end the run.

Hug the perimeter early to keep the middle open, plan exits before you enter a pocket, and in the late game think in coils — sweeping back and forth like a mower leaves no dead ends. The vacating-tail rule is your emergency escape: chasing your own tail tip is legal.