Serpentine

The Good
Before they had success with Prince of Persia and the Carmen Sandiego series, Brøderbund Software made some classic games in the early Eighties, with one such example being Serpentine, a title so good it should have made its debut in the arcades. The game was initially released on the Apple II, but was eventually ported over to the VIC-20, Commodore 64, and Atari 8-bit computers.

The player controls a serpent that must roam around a maze. Three other serpents enter the maze one by one, and your job is to devour each one of them, starting from the tail. Helping you is a frog that hops around the maze, and if your serpent eats it you will start to get long. To make matters worse, a serpent occasionally leaves a speckled egg behind, and you need to eat this before it hatches into another serpent. Once all the serpents have been eaten, you return to your safety zone ready to proceed to the next maze.

I find Serpentine a difficult game since it is not as easy as it seems. If you chase the one serpent, it takes ages to catch up to it, even if you are a short distance away. If I just follow one, I ended up turning a corner by accident, and there is the likely chance that the other serpents would end up in the same area. Using shortcuts help you reach the serpent quicker, but since the serpents have no pre-defined paths, I ended up facing my enemy and crash into it. I found that the safest way to avoid all this is to keep eating frogs before the serpents do.

This excellent VIC-20 port was done by Creative Software, the same crowd who ported Choplifter over to the machine. This version is the only one to feature the snake theme, and this blends well with the theme of the game quite nicely. During the game, you get to hear the hisses of the serpents, adding to the game’s atmosphere.

Graphics are not bad. You and the other serpents have different colors. The frog that appears on screen is not animated, but I think that is because the VIC-20 isn’t capable of doing much animations, so the frog just appears in a different section of the maze. A nice touch to the game is the way the serpents turn green when you are allowed to eat any part of its body, not just its tail. I was surprised that Creative managed to cram so much into one cartridge, and this means you don’t have to install some memory expansion to get it working.


The Bad
I noticed some slowdown when there are more than one serpent on the screen; it's as if the VIC's CPU could not handle the large number of sprites at once. Also, when you have managed to eat more than one serpent but lose a life after that, you have to restart the level all over again. Very annoying.

The Bottom Line
Serpentine for the VIC-20 is an excellent game where the object is to devour each serpent, while protecting yourself at the same time. A frog hopping around the screen can be devoured to give you an advantage over the other serpents. Graphics and sound are great, and like many games of its time, Serpentine will make you say "Oh, what the hell... just one more go." So, the bottom line: if you like early games from Brøderbund, pre Prince of Persia and Carmen Sandiego, this game is definitely worth a go.

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.