No, we haven’t gone back in time to 1998. Snake is indeed back in its original form (sort of) on the Nokia Ovi Store along with a few tweaks. Not much has changed, but how does it transfer to modern day touchscreen devices. Read our Snake review to find out.

This latest version of Snake is almost identical to the one we used to know and love. The aim is the same. Guide a snake around a grid to chomp food morsels while avoiding hitting the walls or your own tail. But each food piece you eat makes your snake grow longer, thus making it increasingly difficult to avoid hitting yourself and having to restart.

It features 20 levels, each requiring 100 points to progress though. Before jumping into the game you get to choose your speed setting from 1-10. Anything less than 7 and we’re talking a snail pace. To get the most out of it we’d recommend going the full 10. It’s more challenging but worth it, and in some ways easier. The higher the speed the more points you get for chomping food, making it quicker to access new levels. As usual what makes snake challenging isn’t the levels so much themselves, but the fight against your own patience as much as anything. It’s as much a game of skill and timing as it was when it launched.

You also get to change the look of the game, should you wish. Hitting the menu will let you change game design. you can choose the green background and blocky 1998 version, or the same version again but this time with a rounded snake. For something a little more modern you can opt for the 2000 version – the one where the snake actually looks like a snake, or the modern version, which still looks retro enough to satisfy most ardent Snake diehards.

So what’s it like to control? Chances are you already remember from way back when. For our review we tested it out on an N97, curious to see it how translates to a touchscreen. For the most part the core gameplay remains similar, except this time you press on the screen the direction you wish to head in. It works well but occasionally we found ourselves having to prod more than once to make the snake obey us. So instead we popped up the keyboard and used the N97’s directional pad to great success. The controls might not have been as nimble as we remember it on our old key operated Nokia 3310 but for the most part it feels just as it did back in 2000.

Overall Snake is well worth a revisit in this Ovi Store offering. The core gameplay remains, even on touchscreen devices. If you’ve got a touchscreen device such as the N97 we recommended using the directional pad for a more authentic experience. But even without it on devices such as the Nokia 5800 you’re sure to have as much joy with it despite it lacking the polish of more modern titles. It might have lost some of the shine it had, but appreciate it for it’s gameplay and you’ll come to realise what made it such a hit in the first place.

DOWNLOAD: Snake

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