Snake Rattle N Roll

Manual

30K plays 1990 #Action

Snake Rattle 'n' Roll is a platform video game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was originally released in North America in July 1990 and in Europe on 27 March 1991. The game features two snakes, Rattle and Roll, as they make their way through eleven 3D isometric levels. A port to the Mega Drive with an extra level was released by Sega in June 1993 exclusively in Europe. Snake Rattle 'n' Roll was developed by Rare members Tim Stamper and Mark Betteridge. The music was composed by David Wise and was inspired by "Shake, Rattle and Roll" and other 1950s-era songs.

The object of the game is to navigate the obstacles in each level and eat enough "Nibbley Pibbleys" to ring a weigh-in bell located in the level, which will allow the snakes to exit. The game can be played by a single player or by two players simultaneously. Snake Rattle 'n' Roll has been named one of the top games released on the NES and one of the top games released by Rare. After the rights to the game was acquired by Microsoft alongside Rare, it was included in Rare's 2015 Rare Replay compilation for Xbox One, and was re-released on the Nintendo Classics service on 21 February 2024. A follow-up for the Game Boy, titled Sneaky Snakes, was released by Tradewest in 1991.

From Wikipedia's article Snake Rattle 'n' Roll, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Keyboard controls

NESPlayer 1Player 2
D-pad↑↓←→IKJL
BZN
AXM
SelectShiftB
StartEnterSpace

Hotkeys

  • 1 Quick save state
  • 2 Quick load state
  • 3 Change save slot

Gamepads are detected when you press a button. Remap any key from the emulator’s Controls menu (gear icon).

Emulator help & troubleshooting

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Keyboard controls

NESPlayer 1Player 2
D-pad↑↓←→IKJL
BZN
AXM
SelectShiftB
StartEnterSpace

Hotkeys

  • 1 Quick save state
  • 2 Quick load state
  • 3 Change save slot

Gamepads are detected when you press a button. Remap any key from the emulator’s Controls menu (gear icon).

Emulator help & troubleshooting

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Pixel Verdict

Snake Rattle N RollNES

3.0 Good job

Critics 72 · 6 reviews

What the reviews talk about

Key wordsquirkypreciseexcellentstunningoriginalfun

What the critics said

  • German magazine Video Games called Snake Rattle 'n' Roll "a quaint and original game" that includes high-quality graphics.

    — Video Games

  • UK-based magazine Retro Gamer covered Snake Rattle 'n' Roll as part of its retrospective on isometric video games, saying that the game "merged brilliantly the offbeat nature of games such as Head Over Heels with popular movement-based isometric action/puzzle titles like Marble Madness and Spindizzy".

    — Retro Gamer, 2011

From the Reception section of Wikipedia's Snake Rattle 'n' Roll article, under CC BY-SA 4.0. The words are the critics'; their full reviews are on the publishers' pages.

Scores

  • Nintendo Power 4/3/3.5/4
  • Mean Machines 1991 94%
  • Video Games 1991 72%
  • Retro Gamer 2006 91%
  • Mega 1993 70%
  • AllGame 3.5/5

From the review table of Wikipedia's article. The face takes, first that applies: the Metascore for this platform, GameRankings' archived average, our average of the critics (one number per publication, a panel averaged), one review alone, the players' rating. Critics and players are never mixed.

Players' rating: 82/100 · 74 votes

Full reviews

Face key

  1. 1.00+
  2. 1.540+
  3. 2.050+
  4. 2.560+
  5. 3.068+
  6. 3.575+
  7. 4.080+
  8. 4.585+
  9. 5.090+

5.0 Outstanding! · 4.0 Great job! · 3.0 Good job · 2.0 Could be better · 1.0 Wake me up when it's over · A thumbs-up adds half a point. Our own drawings, in the spirit of the faces GamePro magazine used in the '90s.

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