FastTracker 2

When called upon to explain its success against such strong competition, some will mumble something about the mouse support, or give a nod toward the ability to "play along" with your song-in-progress in realtime using the computer keyboard. These half-hearted attempts dance around the most telling ingredient in FastTracker 2's success: it contained a fully-functioning clone of Nibbles, Microsoft's QBasic take on the classic "snake game" spectacularly depicted with "light bikes" in the feature film Tron. Since the implementation of this game was not the main attraction, it was not especially feature-rich, and only occupied a fraction of the screen display. Nonetheless, all the salient characteristics were there: the boxy worms (multiplayer mode optional) would grow accordingly in length after eating the numbered boxes, dieing after colliding with the walls, each other, their own body or other obstacles. Additional gameplay flavours included variable play speed, absent boundary barriers permitting "wrap"-around, and a superimposed grid indicating more clearly if your snake was about to eat a number-box or munch its own tail. (Apparently some people also used FastTracker 2 to compose music with 8)