This little game is an adaption of the well-known “Snake” game for CP/M compatible RC2014 homebrew systems. It runs on both, SCM and RomWBW based CP/M variants.

It requires a TMS video module on MSX I/O ports $98/$99 and optionally supports an AY8910/YM2149 sound module on ports $D0/$D8 or $60/$68 as well as the Tynemouth joystick module on port $01.

How to play

The game play is quite simple:

• Use a joystick or W/A/S/D on the keyboard to control the snake
• Avoid hitting any walls or yourself
• Pick up all the strawberries along the way
• With each strawberry that has been picked up, the snake grows in length
• The snake incrementally gets a faster throughout the game
• Every 100 points one of four “barrier walls” is randomly placed
• The game ends once you hit a wall or yourself

Written in FORTH

In true retro-computing spirit, TMSnake was written in DX-Forth for CP/M-80 on a real RC2014 homebrew computer. This also includes the required TMS video driver, the custom character set and the AY driver as well as the actual game code. It took me about a one and a half year to finish the code and it has been an interesting lesson in simple game mechanics for me.

Download

You can download the game on itch.io