What Was the First Nokia Phone With Snake?
The Nokia 6110, in 1997. The game was designed and programmed by Taneli Armanto, a
Finnish engineer at Nokia, and it shipped preinstalled on the handset — one of three games that
came with the phone. It did not arrive as a download or a purchase. It was simply there the first time
you turned the phone on.
Nokia later shipped follow-up versions on other handsets, which is why the game is remembered as "the
Nokia snake" rather than as one phone's feature.
Why the Nokia Version Still Feels Different
- One colour, no shading. A monochrome LCD had two states per pixel. Everything you
saw was drawn out of dark blocks on a green-grey screen, so the game had to be readable with no
colour and no contrast tricks.
- Square segments. On the LCD the snake was a run of solid blocks joined into one
line. There were no rounded corners and no gradients because the screen could not show them.
- The keypad. You steered with the phone's number keys — no swipe, no analogue stick.
That is why the game felt like a series of quick decisions rather than one continuous motion.
- Made for queues and bus stops. The handset version was built to be picked up for
thirty seconds and put down again. That is still the best way to play it.
This page renders the game the way that screen would have: a green-grey board, dark blocky segments, and
a square piece of food. Same rules underneath.
Which Nokia Had the Snake Game?
More than one. The 6110 is where it started in 1997, and later handsets — including the 3310, the phone
most people picture when they think of this game — shipped with their own version of it. Nokia's Snake
was preinstalled across a long list of models over the following years, which is how it ended up in a
very large number of pockets.
How to Play the Nokia Snake Game
- Start — press an arrow key, or swipe once on a touchscreen. The snake starts moving
immediately, exactly as it did on the handset.
- Turn — arrow keys or W A S D on a keyboard, swipes on a phone. It is a
four-direction game: no diagonals, no reversing into yourself.
- Eat — each piece of food makes the snake one block longer and adds one point. That
is the only way the snake grows.
- Stop before the wall or your own tail — either one ends the round instantly. The
board has no wrap-around.
Pick the slowest speed for your first round. The handset version was slow by modern standards, and that
is what made long runs possible.