Many people have fond memories of playing Snake on a classic Nokia cellphone. A small group of creators has taken this nostalgia a step further to create an entire handheld console dedicated to playing Snake and nothing else.

Before the days of smartphones and Angry Birds or Candy Crush, if you were stuck waiting for a bus or a dentist appointment, you had fewer options for killing time. If you had a Nokia phone, you at least had the option of playing Snake.

For those unfamiliar, Snake is a very simple game where you control a line of dots. Every so often, another dot will appear, and you need to direct your snake to eat the dot. Your snake will then become longer. The snake can never cross over itself, or the game ends. Simple and fun.

A tribute to the early 2000s

A small group of creators led by Arnov Sharma decided to relive the early 2000s nostalgia by creating a handheld that did nothing but play Snake. The device is powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and uses a matrix panel and a custom-made 3D-printed frame to display the game.

The team modelled the device using Fusion 360 and used custom PCBs created by PCB Way along with the 3D case, matrix display, and an onboard 3.7V 2600mAh lithium ion cell for power.

The matrix display shows a green snake that can be controlled by the four directional buttons and sent to eat a red dot, causing the snake to grow as with the original game. Sharma and his team coded the game from scratch and added a Score indicator to show how many red dots the snake has consumed.

The team has posted a video along with a full build guide if anyone wants to follow in their footsteps and create their own Snake device.

About the Author

Rebecca Hills-Duty

Writing and journalism experience at VRFocus, UploadVR, The Escapist, HTC, PC Gamer, Tech Radar+ and Dexerto. Can sometimes be found playing with retro tech.