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Google adds Snake to Maps for April Fools' Day gag

The reimagined Snake game will be playable in Android and iOS Google Maps apps for around a week.

Daniel Van Boom Senior Writer
Daniel Van Boom is an award-winning Senior Writer based in Sydney, Australia. Daniel Van Boom covers cryptocurrency, NFTs, culture and global issues. When not writing, Daniel Van Boom practices Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, reads as much as he can, and speaks about himself in the third person.
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Remember Snake? It's back -- in Google Maps form!

Snake, the iconic Nokia game first introduced on the Nokia 6110 in 1997, has been reimagined for Google Maps in celebration of April Fools' Day. You can play it on iOS and Android versions of the Google Maps app. Just touch the sidebar option on the left side of the search bar and you'll see the "Play Snake" option.

There's no actual snake this time. Instead, you play as a public transport vehicle, like a Tokyo bullet train, San Francisco cable car or a London double decker bus, and pickup passengers on an 8-bit map of their respective cities.

There are six cities to chose from: Cairo, Sao Paulo, London, Sydney, San Francisco, Tokyo. There's also a "World" option, where you pick up passengers from all over the map.

Snake will be playable in Google Maps for roughly a week, a Google spokesperson said, although the tech giant did set up a dedicated site for it.

Google loves a good April Fools' gag. The company "announced" a NES-inspired 8-bit Google Maps in 2012, added a Pac-Man game to Maps in 2015 and a Where's Waldo search last year. These are only a few of the Google Maps-related examples. The entire list is much more exhaustive.

Keen to see more April Fools' Day gags? Head here for a comprehensive list. Hate April Fools' Day with the fury of a thousand suns? Head here instead!

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