Serpentine - Atari 7800

It's a Snake-Eat-Snake World!

In an age when human beings have become an insignificant part of the landscape, mighty serpents rule the decaying corridors and pathways of our vanishing civilization. You have managed to tame several of the huge beasts to do your bidding, and now ride forth to rid the planet of their slithery cousins.

Your serpent is fast, but the evil serpents are big, cunning and hungry. You will need to outwit them to chomp them down to size. An occasional tasty frog added to your serpent's diet will help it grow large enough to take on your foe. But bad snakes need nourishment too, and if they get to the frogs before you do they become dangerously assertive.

Gameplay

Serpentine is an original maze game, programmed by David Snider and ported to the Atari 7800 by Mike Saarna. Serpentine features 20 different mazes, and a high score table. The high score table is permanently saved if you have AtariVox or High Score Cartridge device connected to your Atari 7800.

Eat other snakes, and avoid being eaten. That's not quite as easy as it sounds. You begin each game with three lives. You can only butt heads with snakes that are smaller than you, or you'll lose a life. To kill the larger enemy snakes you'll need to munch on their tails until they're gone, or at least until they're smaller than you and ripe for a head-on attack.

When all of the enemy snakes are gone the level ends, and you're treated to another level with a new maze layout. Serpentine 7800 features twenty different maze layouts.

After a period of time in the game, your serpent will form an egg at its tail segment. If you manage to lay the egg, and it remains uneaten until the end of the level, it will hatch and add to your lives. Be careful - If your snake is only two segments long and you lay an egg, you'll lose a life.

Unfortunately, the enemy snakes lay eggs too. If you leave one of these on the maze too long, it will hatch and you'll have another baby enemy on your hands.

There's a frog that periodically shows up, hopping around the maze. If the frog smells an egg, he'll move towards it and eat it, if none of the snakes eat him first. Eating the frog, eating the egg, or eating an enemy snake head-on will add a segment to your length, up to a maximum of seven segments.

About

Serpentine is an original maze game, programmed by David Snider and ported to the Atari 7800 by Mike Saarna. Serpentine features 20 different mazes, and a high score table. The high score table is permanently saved if you have AtariVox or High Score Cartridge device connected to your Atari 7800. Serpentine is a 128K game cartridge featuring additional on-board RAM.

Features

• Unique arcade-style maze game
• Progress through 20 different mazes
• Optional High Score saving to AtariVox, High Score Cartridge, or XM
• Adjust screen vertically
• Pause Support

Screenshots

AtariVox Support

If you have an AtariVox, SaveKey, or compatible device plugged in to the right controller port, the high score table will be saved automatically.

High scores can be cleared by pressing fire and pressing up as the Atari is powered on.

Additional Information

Serpentine includes game cartridge and full-color, 8-page manual.

Get a Serpentine Box!

If you'd like a boxed copy of Serpentine, please select "Box Upgrade: Yes" at the top of the page before adding Serpentine to your cart. Our boxes are professionally printed and include a box insert to hold your Serpentine cartridge in place. We want you to play our games, so we have not sealed or shrinkwrapped the boxes in any way, allowing you easy access to the game cartridge and manual.

These boxes are the same size as boxes Atari produced for their games "back in the day". They look great sitting on a shelf with your other boxed homebrew games, or alongside games from the classic Atari library. We only have a limited number of boxes for each game, and there is no guarantee they will become available again once our supplies are exhausted. Click on the images to the right to see larger photos of the box.