Serpentine

The Good
I remember playing a game called Nibbles, in which you controlled a snake who must come in contact with small numbers that range from 1 to 10, and when you come in contact with those numbers, you must then grab a different number placed somewhere else on the game screen, but you had to avoid crashing into other obstacles while doing this. Get all those numbers and you proceed to the next, more difficult, level.

Serpentine is similar to this game, with some alterations. You see, three red snakes will appear and roam around a maze looking for prey. and your job is to devour a snake starting from its tail, but can eat it from its head if it turns green. Each snake will occasionally leave a speckled egg behind, which you must collect before it hatches out into another snake. At the beginning of the game, you might think that it isn't fair that you start out small while the other snakes start out big. Fortunately for you, however, a green frog will start hopping about the screen, and if you manage to devour this frog, you start to get long. The level ends and a new one begins when you have devoured all snakes, but each level has a different maze.

I had a bit of difficulty devouring a snake if too many of them were in the same area, so the best thing that I did in the end was wait until the other snakes were gone so that I only had the one snake to deal with. Most of the time I was the hunter, and chased a snake all over the place until I had the chance to devour it completely. But other times, I actually was the hunted as I was always trying to get away from the snakes, and become the hunter again.

As far as I know, Serpentine looks like a maze game that could have appeared as a coin-op, but actually, it wasn't. The graphics are not bad, and there is mostly music in the game, along with a few beeps. What I enjoyed most was hearing the threatening sound that the snakes emit when they are making their way through the maze.

The Bad
Nothing.

The Bottom Line
This has got to be one of the all-time arcade hits, even though it did not appear in the arcades. It reminds me a bit like Nibbles but with more snakes instead of numbers. If you like simple maze games, then give this a try.