The game was developed by Armanto after the marketing team at Nokia wanted to include more custom options on their new phone.

In November 2012, The Museum of Modern Art in New York announced that it would add Snake to its collection of 40 notable electronic games.

[1] Snake was programmed by Taneli Armanto, who was part of a group responsible for the interface design at Nokia[1] near his hometown in Finland.

[1] The final choice to make Snake involved the infrared connection to allow for wireless data between devices, as Armanto felt this could be applied for a multiplayer version of the game.

As the new Nokia phone was in the prototype stage, Armanto developed the game for a previous generation device.

[8] Armanto had no restrictions outside the size of the game and visuals, as the whole operating system for the phone could only have one megabyte of memory and the screen was a low-resolution monochrome display.

[12] According to Nokia, 350 million copies of the game exist globally in some form, though Armanto believes that the number is likely much higher.

[9] In November 2012, The Museum of Modern Art in New York announced that it wanted to add Snake to its collection of notable electronic games.