Before Shadow Fighter, There Was Snake.
It was 1999. The internet was just arriving. David Ellams was a second-year Computing & Informatics student who found desktop app development in Delphi boring — so he taught himself HTML and built websites in Notepad while his classmates did the assignments. Then he turned to games.
Snake 3000 was born in VB6 — but it was never going to be an ordinary Snake clone. David added AI opponents that could actually challenge you. Then he built network multiplayer for up to 4 players — in 1999, when most games barely had this. Then a live chat system between players. Multiple game modes. A full feature set that went miles beyond what anyone expected from a student project.
And then VB6 started struggling. The network synchronisation was demanding more speed, more precision, more control than Visual Basic could provide. David hit the ceiling — and instead of accepting it, he did something that would define the next 25 years of his life:
He decided to teach himself C++.
Snake 3000 didn't just produce a game. It produced the decision that led to Shadow Fighter. Which led to Yoga4Autism. Which led to the OASIS. The whole universe traces back to a snake that moved too fast for VB6.