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The Dude Who Wrote Snood
usacoder writes "The Raleigh News and Observer Lifestyle section has a story on the guy who wrote Snood, Dave Dobson. It's nice to see that shareware can still make money for some developers." From the article: "He describes the evolution of Snood into a cult attraction as a series of random events, and refers to his fame as the game's creator as third-rate celebrity. 'But,' he adds, 'I milk it for all it's worth.'"
You are personally responsible for me skipping half of my classes in college. Hope you enjoy your stinkin' shareware fees.
I don't remember where I first learned about Snood, but I can attest to the cult mentality that surrounds it. It's the first shareware game where I grew up and paid the paltry sum instead of just finding a hack for it. And when I saw it was available on the gba I didn't hesitate to pick up a copy, glad to know that some guy just wrote a simple, fun little game and that it ended up on a cart.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
Why did he give his game the same name as a hairnet?
I had downloaded a beta version many years ago (1999?) and got a BSOD style error, to which I reported to him the full error message and what I had done ahead of that. He emailed me back a day or two later saying he fixed it, and to download an updated (but still beta) version. First (and I think it's still the only) time I ever saw a BSOD source get eliminated.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
From the screen cap it looks like Bubble Bobble, never played Snood though.... how can a game like that get as addictive as Evercrack
A whole article, and yet not a single word about how Snood is a straight rip-off of Puzzle Bobble...
FWIW, it sounds awfully similar to Frozen Bubble --- was FB based on Snood?
There once was a guy who wrote Snood
He was really a talented dude
You could not avoid
Just like playing Arkanoid
And then you need an appointment with Freud.
Just goes to show that you can make a lot of money by copying someone else's work if you just market it with a few silly looking monsters (Sesame Street, Barnie, Teletubbies, John and Teresa Kerry... oops!).
Response: This is the Microsoft automailer, "Maily". This problem appears to be your fault. Can I help?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Though the article makes it out to be, it isn't original. The author nowhere points out that he was at all influenced by Puzzle Bobble/Bust a Move, an arcade game by Taito that came out in '94 on the Neo Geo hardware, predating Snood by roughly 2 years. It had a cannon at the bottom and fired up colored balls at rows of said balls above, which eliminate when matched in 3s or more.
I think it's all well and good doing a clone game. I've played, loved, and respected many tetris clones over the years. I would say it's possible he came up with Snood without having every seen or played Puzzle Bobble, but I just don't buy it. There are too many similarities.
So does anyone know of any other articles posted elsewhere that confess that Snood is essentially clone?
Snood is just a shareware version of Bust-A-Move (a.k.a. Puzzle Bobble), which was released in 1994. And of course the two-player version of Bust-A-Move is TRULY addictive, exacting vengeance on your good friends via crazy multi-bubble drops. Still, I give the guy credit for making serious cash on a homebrew game.
Regular Meta Moderators are not more likely to get mod points.
Instead of rehashing the Snood clone discussion, just visit Slashdot's article two years ago about Snood:
;-).
Snood, the Simple Game
So just read the previous discussion over, find what you thought was your original comment, and link. Saves typing
-Ace
from TFA:
Soon, he was imitating games that used to devour his quarters at the arcade. But he was limited by text-only capabilities. He needed images. Color.
They made text based arcade games?
"Dave's got kids. They sure are neat. Register Snood so they can eat."
That's not a very nice subliminal message... Naughty AC.
Snood was the game that introduced me to spyware. "Gator? What's this?"
[o]_O
So which came first, Snood or Frozen Bubble? To lazy to check the CVS logs. ;)
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
So he rips off Taito's title to the point where people think Puzzle Bobble is the imitator, makes a substandard clone that isn't even a realtime game AND becomes one of the first developers to begin installing Offer Manager/GATOR SPYWARE on computers?
Why should we respect this guy? He took thunder away from Taito and ruined countless computers. I hate that friggin' O symbol. I had to clean it every day back in high school in a room full of computers. These kids didn't know what the f. On top of that, the game was too easy. There was no pressure to act fast and the collision detection was piss poor. You could fit any piece down any narrow path you wanted. Programmer art was in it, too.
I hate Snood and I'm proud of it.
I can't do that, Dave...
My roomie and I discovered Snood fairly early on, I think 1999. We didn't figure out the point of it for a few days but we "played" it when we were high anyway. Later on I got good at Snood, or so I thought, but some potheads I was hanging out with got some REAL high Scores.
I once wrote Dave an e-mail letting him know what a following he has in the Stony Brook weed community. I also asked him why the faces had to be so bizzare, as I found them kinda freaky when high.
Dave responded saying that he was considering an extension pack for Snood where the faces were not quite so grody. I guess he was just fucking with me, expecting me not to remember. Of course that never came out, as far as I know, anyway.
Ah oh well.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
This snood game of his is a crappy clone of Taito's classic Bust a move / puzzle bobble .
Not only that but the visuals sucks and his code is horrible (try to make the game bigger and you'll see)
It pisses me off that he made money off of this. Taito should sue his ass for all it's worth.
Frozen Bubble is a (good) clone of Snood.
Here are some responses to various comments, if anybody cares:
I've never represented that Snood was original, although I did write the first version way back in late 1995/early 1996, and it included a number of differences from other similar arcade games at the time. The skull snoods (i.e. Snoods that can't be matched and have to be dropped), the looser collision detection (which apparently some people hate, but which I thought made it a better game), the lack of time pressure, the danger bar management, the random layouts, mouse control rather than joystick. It is actually many of these features that people say they like most about the game, and many of them have been included in other similar games.
This still not great innovation, certainly, but you have to remember the following:
1) I wrote the thing primarily for my wife to play, since she never went to arcades. I never expected it to sell much at all; my previous game, Centaurian, was selling maybe 3-5 copies a week tops at the time, and I considered it a better game then.
2) I wrote it on a non-competing platform (i.e. Macintosh; PC came later in 1998 due to me getting probably 30-50 requests a day for it). Don't tell me the arcade video game industry was suddenly going to expand into the Mac shareware market.
3) The shareware community at the time (and still today) was rife with imitations of arcade games, including nearly every one of Ambrosia's early products (e.g. Maelstrom = Asteroids, Cyclone = Star Castle). There were probably 30 different popular shareware tetris-ish games then on Mac alone. There's nothing illegal or actionable in that if you're not using names, artwork, etc., and I was careful to stay far away from that. Just look at all the Monopoly clones out there - none of the localized ones are made by Parker Brothers.
4) The Gator thing - I'm not necessarily too proud of that, but (1) the version of the Gator software we installed was the e-wallet kind; it didn't send personal information other than anonymous browsing statistics to their servers, (2) there were clear warnings in the installer that it was being installed, an explanation of what it would do, and instructions for removing it, and (3) there was always a non-Gator version of Snood available. We terminated our deal with them after maybe a year, year and a half. Gator has gone in a different, more morally obscure direction since we were involved with them. Even three years after we quit with them, people are still shouting about spyware; I guess I'd warn other developers to be more careful than we were about both your partnerships and how they may be perceived, sine the perception is often quite different from the reality.
So, you can say I'm not original (I'm not! But go look at the console game section of your local Target sometime and tell me what percentage of the games there are unique archetypes uninfluenced by anything else). You can say we shouldn't have partnered with Gator (maybe not; it seemed like an OK and morally acceptable idea at the time, and we tried to be very careful and up-front about what our users were getting).
You can't say, though, that people don't like Snood; even if I'd never made any money off it, I can tell from my e-mails that people are having fun with it and playing it with their families and friends, and that's cool. People use it to teach special-ed kids about shapes and colors, in kids' cancer and burn wards, to stop smoking, to lose weight, and to rehab after strokes, which is even cooler. I don't know why it caught on as much as it did, and I consider myself very lucky.
My thanks to everybody who posted nice comments or constructive criticism.
Sincerely,
Dave
Super Puzzle fighter (2 Turbo)
At first glance, it seems pretty silly - a derivative of Puyo Puyo that perhaps isn't as good as the original. It almost seems like arbitrary complexity was added and little else. But, as you play it the tricky balance between attack and defense becomes clear. I think the developers went to great lengths to playtest and balance the game - to perfection. It's especially great as against a competent human opponent. The handicapping feature can cover a bit for differences, but you need to have somebody who's mastered the basics to really get the best experience.
In the most recent Mortal Kombat package - Deception, they copied SPF2T except for one important detail - the gems merging into power gems. Also the scrolling seems over-smooth, which is something I never thought I would actually complain about, but it feels really wrong. I haven't logged much time on this because I have easy access to the original.
The most common home version of this game you can find is for the PSX. There was a release for the GBA about a year ago. There was also a PC version put out in the cheap bins of CompUSA. There might be some MAME solution. For the life of me, I have no idea why there hasn't been an update of this game for the PS2/GameCube/XBox generation of consoles. Maybe they have a Super Puzzle Fighter 3 in Japan - I have no idea. I'd love to see some snazzy new graphics and new characters, but I think they got the gameplay so perfect on 2 Turbo, any attempt to update the mechanics or balance would probably not be an improvement.
I would venture to say that Snood came out first. And goddam is it addictive! I have never played evercrack though. never even heard of it... google here I come.
He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave. - William Drummond
Snood is a blatant rip-off, that adds nothing to the Puzzle Bobble series of games. I think the big break for Snood was when it was featured in a commercial for bank loans or something. A guy was playing Snood and his S/O was telling him she was pregnant in a snarky way. My first thought was, "That piece of .... in a commercial?!?!" Even if you love the concept, Snood has always been a buggy, crash-happy product.
Popcap ripped Magical Drop to make Astro Pop, but at least they added to the formula. Zuma is a rip-off a game that I think was called Ballistic. They added a bit, but it's very similar to the game that had a tiny release on the PSX. You lost a lot quicker on the PSX, so if nothing else, Popcap balanced a very rough concept. Big Money is a rip-off of the "Same Game" or Maki which is so simple and common, it may be impossible to know the true origins, but I think it's certainly Japanese. But for all the derivative titles, Popcap always added something. They added enough to help advance the genre, so I can't really fault them too much.
Cubis is a variant of a rare game called Builder's Block, but they changed so much, it's truly a different game. I like Builder's Block a lot better myself, especially the single-player game in the PSX release.
One of the greatest rip-offs with enhancements was Deadly Rooms of Death (D.R.O.D) which is a very cool exetnsion of the old game Daleks, or the even older Robots. There's even been a fan re-programming of it. (http://sourceforge.net/projects/drod) Last I heard, the original D.R.O.D. developer's whereabouts were unknown. You could also argue (at least I could, anywat) that great Williams game Robotron is actually a derivative of the ancient game Robots. I only saw it running once on some kind of terminal system, with no idea what was serving the game from the other side, so I can't really say what it was like in the day. But I still play tons of Daleks and Drod. Once again Popcap gets into the concept with Seven Seas, but with lots of changes.
Ripping off game mechanics is pretty much a standard thing development strategy. Most of the great strategy games are all boosted from great board games. Pretty much every game concept in play today can be traced back to an original title from the 80's. It's a pity the a dead-end game like Snood made a lot of money and quirky fame for the developer. Borrowing concepts is only acceptable, IMO, if it advances the genre or refines the gameplay. Just putting funny faces on an established Japanese franchies is pretty weak. Especially when the end product is vastly inferior to the source material.
And both are clones of Puzzle Bobble.
My Norton just barfed all over your sig.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I was a huge Snood addict, *huge* (we're talking played since 1996 on both Mac and PC, at one point averaging 100 games a day in a 4 hr session), but my addiction was quickly replaced by another game which feeds my puzzle solving needs but offers me more variety and more challenges. E.V.E Paradox is a suite of games with a game called Orbit that has replaced Snood as my new addiction. Since loading E.V.E. I haven't played Snood once in over 4 months!