Nibbler (video game)

Nibbler
Developer(s)	Joseph H. Ulowetz and John M. Jaugilas
Publisher(s)	Rock-Ola Datamost (home)
Designer(s)	Joseph H. Ulowetz and John M. Jaugilas
Platform(s)	Arcade (original) Apple II Atari 8-bit
Release date(s)	1982
Genre(s)	Snake game
Mode(s)	Single player, 2 player alternating

Nibbler is an arcade game by Rock-Ola, the most successful game released by the company. Its gameplay is a variant of Pac-Man and Snake: the object is to navigate a snake through an enclosed maze, while consuming dots along the way. The length of the snake increases with each object consumed, making the game more difficult. The player must avoid colliding with the snake's own body sections. When the snake hits a wall, it stalls and rapidly runs down the level timer. After all the objects on the screen have been eaten, the player progresses to the next maze.

A home version was produced by Datasoft for the Atari 8-bit and the Apple II.

Nibbler was the first arcade game on which a player achieved one billion points.

In the Competitive Arena

Nibbler world record attempts by Tim McVey and Dwayne Richard at MAGFest 7 in 2009.

Nibbler was the first video game with a nine-digit score counter and the first game where it was possible for a player to score one billion points. The core patterns and strategies used to achieve that were introduced at Twin Galaxies Arcade by Tom Asaki of Montana, who made a pilgrimage to the arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa in 1983. Asaki aimed to become the first gamer to reach one billion points on any game and to win a Nibbler machine from Rock-Ola, who were running a contest for the first billion point game. Due to a number of setbacks, Tom only reached a score of 838 million points.^[1]

The billion point mark was first reached by Tim McVey at the Twin Galaxies Arcade on January 17, 1984, scoring 1,000,042,270 points. News of his accomplishment was carried by the wire services and a feature story on his feat was published in the July 1984 issue of Computer Games Magazine. As McVey was a resident of Ottumwa, which had just been declared the "Video Game Capital of the World", he became the first video game player in gaming history to have a civic day set aside in his honor: "Tim McVey Day" on January 28, 1984. Officials from Rock-Ola, the game's manufacturer, were in attendance to award Mr. McVey a free "Nibbler" arcade machine for his accomplishment.

Soon after the mark was set, Italian Enrico Zanetti set out to break McVey's score and did so with a score of 1,001,073,840 on September 27, 1984. However, this was not discovered by anyone in the United States until years after the marathon and was never officially verified. Along with Nibbler being a fairly uncommon machine and the probability that the machine that Zanetti played on was a bootleg, the score has been disputed, most notably by McVey and Rick Carter.^[2]

Decades later, Dwayne Richard of Canada broke the coveted billion point mark. It was later revealed that the circuit boards used in his game were analyzed and found to have a timing problem that created an unfair advantage by speeding up certain parts of the game allowing him to arrive at a top score much sooner, and were estimated to shave multiple hours off of Richard's marathon game session time. To avoid further controversy, Mr. Richard requested his removal of the world record score from the Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard. Sometime later, upon investigation of Mr. Richard's game board by Glendale California based Vintage Arcade Superstore, it was found that a 6502 microprocessor chip which had experienced a mechanical failure and was operating at a faster speed.

Twenty-nine years after McVey's billion point score, the score was broken four times in the span of less than two years. Rick Carter of Glen Burnie, Maryland was the first to break the billion point barrier and claimed the world record with a score of 1,002,222,360 on July 31, 2011.

Approximately five months later, Tim McVey reclaimed the score on Christmas Day 2011, with a score of 1,041,767,060.

Giuseppe Siciliani & Bruno Guarascio (from Cirò Marina KR - Italy) are the first players in Italy and Europe (over 87 hours of continuous play).

Man vs Snake film

In 2013, producer/director/editors Andrew Seklir and Tim Kinzy used Kickstarter to fund the making of a documentary film, titled Man vs. Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler, about the difficulties of achieving a one-billion point score on Nibbler. The documentary had been filming since 2008 and was successfully Kickstarted on September 16, 2013. The movie premiered at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas on September 27, 2015 where it won the Jury Award for Best Picture Documentary. On April 17, 2016 the film made its Canadian premiere at the Calgary Underground Film Festival where it again won the Jury Award for Best Documentary. On May 24, 2016 it was announced that Man vs. Snake would be distributed internationally by leading independent film and documentary publisher Filmbuff with a release date scheduled for June 24, 2016.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} The documentary is now available to view on Netflix.

References

External links

• Nibbler Developer Interview
• History's First Billion-Point Video Game Performance (Jan. 16, 1984) Computer Games magazine, July 1, 1984
• History's First Official Day to Honor a Video Game Player (Jan. 28, 1984) Tim McVey Day Poster, January 28, 1984
• Twin Galaxies Scoreboard for Nibbler World Records
• Tim McVey attempted to set new Nibbler World Record (Game began April 10, 2009 at 8:33am Central Time.)
• Live: Nibbler World Record Attempt, from Retro Thing