A classic arcade-style game, developed in 1982 by David Snider (creator of David's Midnight Magic) for Brøderbund Software. I believe it was originally on the Apple ][, though I had an adapted version on my beloved Commie. No idea if there are any differences.

Anyway, you play a segmented blue snake who slithers through a Pac-Manesque maze attempting to eat other snakes. This is accomplished by sneaking up behind them and taking bites out of their tails. If you get them short enough they turn from red to green and you can eat them whole. Likewise, other snakes can shorten you (or just kill you, in the case of a head-on collision). Eat all the other snakes and advance to the next level.

You can get longer by eating little frogs that sometimes appear, or eating the spotted eggs that other snakes lay when they want to multiply. You also lay eggs from time to time, which eventually hatch into extra lives if they aren't eaten first.

Serpentine had a pretty good gameplay value; it tended to get addictive. The graphics were decent and the sound effects were well-suited (the creepy hissing noise the snakes made raised the stakes of the whole game, I think). Not bad for a game that's as old as I am.


Also a common contemporary typeface, designed by Dick Jensen for the Visual Graphics Corporation. It's technically a sans-serif typeface, though the edges spread out slightly at the tips. Squarish and often oblique, it's a very popular choice these days for all sorts of advertising and other graphic design applications, because of its uniquely dynamic appearance. It looks very crisp, clean and futuristic, and its three distinct line weights make it very versatile. I see it everywhere.

Come to think of it, it looks a little like the everything2 title...