Blockade
1976 · Action · Arcade
Overview
Blockade (1976) by Gremlin is the original snake game: two players steer ever-growing trails and try to make the other crash first. Nokia's Snake descends from it.
Deep Dive
Each player in Blockade controls a line that never stops moving and leaves a solid wall behind it; crash into any wall, your own trail or your opponent's and you lose the round. Gremlin Industries treated it as a simple two-player game, but the idea proved almost endlessly reusable. Atari cloned it as Surround for the 2600, and the concept was reimplemented thousands of times afterwards — most famously as the Snake game on Nokia mobile phones.
Developer Story
Blockade was developed by Gremlin Industries in 1976 and is the origin of the snake game concept. Two players control continuously moving lines that cannot stop or turn back on themselves. The player who crashes into a wall or the opponent's trail loses. The concept was so clean and compelling that it was immediately cloned by competitors and has been reimplemented thousands of times, most famously as the Nokia Snake game in 1998.
Did You Know?
- Blockade is the original snake game — every snake/tron-style game traces its lineage directly to this 1976 cabinet.
- Gremlin had no idea how influential the concept would become; they saw it as a simple two-player filler game.
- Atari cloned it almost immediately as Surround, and it appeared on the Atari 2600 as one of the launch titles.
- The Nokia Snake game, played by hundreds of millions of people on mobile phones in the late 1990s and 2000s, is a direct descendant of Blockade.
Sources & further reading
- Blockade (video game) — Wikipedia
