1970s
Blockade
1976 · Action · Arcade
Overview
Blockade is a classic 1970s action game developed by Gremlin Industries for Arcade.
Deep Dive
Blockade is a classic 1970s action game developed by Gremlin Industries for Arcade.
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.
