The snake or Snake, that mythical game that Nokia included in the phones of its golden age, a title more similar to Game & Watch than to today’s mobile games. Even so, and despite the insurmountable technical and graphic differences, I remember spending very endearing hours playing Snake. And it is still very good, I have been able to verify it.
I perfectly remember unpacking the Nokia 3210, one of my reference phones, the first to change my perspective on telephony (the second would be the Nokia 7610; the third was the iPhone). I bought it as a prepaid in Amena, it came free (company mantra in those years), allowed the change of the casings and also the battery. In itself it was nothing more than a “dumb phone” or dumbphone, mobile phones that today we would only use to detoxify ourselves from the smartphone. Even so, it marked a before and after in my life, partly because it came with a game.
The Snake was a bag of hours despite its extreme simplicity
The mythical snake game, one of the only options that supported a monochrome liquid crystal screen with five lines of text. And the life it gave me, I am convinced that I dedicated more hours to Snake than to any of the current mobile games. And it will not be due to lack of choice, which is literally boring.
Turning on the Nokia screen, seeing that there were no missed calls, no SMS in sight: checking the phone’s news was a much more boring task, although it was also less overwhelming. And of course, when there was some time to fill, a game always fell into the Snake. One after another, I admit.
I have revived my Nokia 3210 for this article, it was time to go back to those times when the most exciting thing about a mobile phone was the snake. And there it was still, with that recognizable MIDI music, with the difficulty of activating the movements with the numeric keypad and with that rough vibration when hitting the walls of the screen. Yes, I added a vibrator to my Nokia 3210: I was prepared for it, but Nokia decided not to include it in much of the world, Spain included. Nothing that a programmer from the serial port of my PC and a part purchased on eBay could not solve.
The game was simple, although much of its charm lay in that simplicity. Also in that there was nothing else to choose from, why deny it: either Snake or spend (a lot) money sending SMS for fun. Wow, if that Nokia 3210 had a list of all the hours I spent dodging the walls while the snake grew in size, it would surely surpass the time spent on games like PUBG or Fortnite. Added. And without there being a gulf of fun and entertainment between the titles of before and those of now.
On the graphic side it is something else, of course.
They were different times. Sometimes I miss them
I will not say that I am anchored to the past, that that past was better than the present or that everything current falls short of the games that existed before, because I will always be a person who lives with notable interest in everything that is yet to come. Still, I do not deny that Turning on the Nokia 3210 awakens a certain emotion in me, as if it were the DeLorean towards my first memories with a mobile phone, the ones that cemented my eternal curiosity towards technology. And if we currently have games of the caliber of PUBG, Fortnite or Genshin Impact on smartphones, it is, in large part, thanks to the now discreet Snake. Thank you very much for making it possible, Nokia.
Cover image | Ivan Linares