The Story of Slither

[aeroflott]

Wrote this article this week. Figured it might be of interest here:

https://arcadeblogger.com/2017/06/02/gdis-slither-the-1-3-million-dollar-crash-burn/

Cheers

T

 

[VectorCollector]

Nice story. Fascinating. Such a cool game. Can't believe that pic of three in a row either ...
But still no picture of the NIB box. LOL (jk)

 

[koolmoecraig]

Awesome. Love stories like this.

 

[JC Arcade]

Tony, you've had some good articles on your blog lately, but please... finish the BZ cabaret resto!
.

 

[aeroflott]

Tony, you've had some good articles on your blog lately, but please... finish the BZ cabaret resto!

Ahahah! I was hoping if I keep churning out shit like this, no one would notice I'm slacking on the BZ. Damn. Yeah I know - I've been putting it off, as I have to relaminate the sides. Just the thought of it is killing me every day, but I will get onto it soon. The backlog is building up, so expect an update by end of June!

 

[jp.jones]

Just curious how Slither became the 'free' game that accompanied the Colecovision roller controller....

 

[koolmoecraig]

Just curious how Slither became the 'free' game that accompanied the Colecovision roller controller....

The only other two major trackball games were Missle Command and Centipede which are both Atari. No way in hell would Atari give them to Coleco.

 

[pinballsmith]

Just finished reading through it. It's a great write-up. I am curious about what the exact production numbers were.

 

[Tornadoboy]

I've got a Slither main EPROM/sound board around I've almost completely stripped of its components, when I've got it bare and before reassembling it I'm going to do a scan of the foil pattern if anyone wants to do a run of repro's someday, all the components are standard, off-the-shelf stuff.

For those unfamiliar this board is the only one unique to Slither, the rest of the board set is exactly the same and is interchangeable with Qix.

It's a pity it was such a flop, I think the game is addictive and personally I like it a LOT better than Centipede. It kind of reminds me of the story of Entertainment Sciences which made Turbo Sub and the holiest of lost holy grails, Bouncer. They only managed to squeeze out one game, and just barely, and financially crashed before releasing Bouncer.

 

[VectorCollector]

Slither is a good candidate for an FPGA board, perhaps.
Anyone play it in MAME and/or with an arcade Pi3?
I only really remember it from playing it on ColecoVision. LOL

 

[RetroInjection]

I'm surprised that they found an operator in Pennsylvania who paid them in Pounds.

 

[1500points]

The work you are doing at writing these stories is absolutely superb. Thank you

 

[aeroflott]

I'm surprised that they found an operator in Pennsylvania who paid them in Pounds.

Fixed! Good spot sir. Thanks.

 

[flynn54321]

So my buddy that picked these games up for me. (He initially found the deal and then agreed that if he could purchase them he would sell them to me). I was on Holiday at the time with my wife. He called me on his way home from picking them up and said - I have both. You can have them for what I got them for plus a few bucks for gas (It was over an hour away). I said... did you happen to grab the box by chance? He said - oh man I almost did! I wasn't sure if you would want it or not. I said yes I would. He told me he would call the guy and have him put the box aside. The following day he was finally able to get in touch with the guy and he said he had already taken the box out to the dumpster but would grab it out of there. Fast forward a month... (when the seller finally got in touch with my buddy about something else they were negotiating a deal on) the guy apparently went to grab the box out of the dumpster right after their initial conversation and it was destroyed. There was a concrete company pouring cement or whatever I guess... and long story short - they dumped some crap into the dumpster while cleaning the mixer out or during the clean up process and did it all over the box. Again I was out of town with my wife and was just happy to have made a deal through my friend on these games. But lesson learned for my buddy... take pictures as it was unboxed and keep the box. Either way I have a brand new Slither in my collection.

 

[schmitty1944]

Very interesting story. thanks for writing and sharing it. I am also wondering about the colecovision connection. It came with coleco's roller controller and as a kid I thought it was an obvious rip off of centipede. Did Coleco pay for the rights to Slither? Did that help with the debts?

Many thanks
Jason

 

[aeroflott]

My best guess would be that Coleco would have paid the creator of the game - Century II - for the home console licence.

GDI released the arcade version under licence from Century II, I can't see how they would have been a part of the console release.

 

[Weehawk]

Thanks for the article, Tony.

As an avid Centipede player circa 1982, I saw the full-page ads for Slither in EGM etc... and looked all over town for one. Never did find any.

It wasn't until the game was added to MAME that I was able to play it for the first time. I was a little disappointed. The gameplay just wasn't quite "smooth" enough, had the potential to be great fun, but just misses the mark for me somehow. Interestingly, the general "feel" of the gameplay is actually a little more like Snake Pit than Centipede, not that this is a bad thing, I love Snake Pit.

Maybe I'll like it better on the real arcade machine. I've had a non-working Slither in one corner of my apartment for about five years now. I even have a spare board for it that I've never gotten around to trying to swap in.