Christmas in Video Games: Homemade Mods Roundup

This is the last in the series: check out the previous articles (1, 2, 3).

One of the fun things about looking into Christmas themed video games is that so many of the games are authored at the grass roots. With the exception of Daze before Christmas and license games like Home Alone, almost all of them were made by folks in their homes, usually modifying (modding) some larger game.

BBS Door Games (search this site)

I wish that I had more concrete evidence of Christmas-themed BBS doors. Searching around the internet, mostly on Jason Scott’s excellent cd.textfiles.com, I can see some of the programs I remember from the late 80s to early 90s. Some just offered Christmas trivia at logon. The more complex ones allowed the user to send email to the North Pole or have an Eliza-style chat with a computerized Santa. Cute and fun, most of these games found their way to the Internet in one form or another.

The ZZT Christmas Special (download here)

If you aren’t aware of the game ZZT, learn about it now. Tim Sweeney’s 1991 offering from Epic Megagames provided gamers with something that no other video game did: a built-in object-oriented programming language. As a result, three things came together: the hackish impulse extend programs beyond their original intent, ANSI artwork and a BBS community to share the results with. It was Web 2.0 before there was a Web 0.9.

So, eventually, someone came up with a Christmas-themed game, uploaded it and shared it around the BBS networks. The theme is pretty spartan: Santa got trapped by a home alarm system and it’s up to you to save him. To get past the alarm system yourself, it’s a timed Sokoban-style box-pushing adventure! Here’s what it looked like:

More Wolfenstein 3-D Mods

I never realized that the old Wolfenstein 3-D still had an active mod community around it. The site linked above, the Wolfenstein 3-D Dome, is a treasure trove of packages to change the original game. One on their front page now is a like to Hotel Romanstein 6 (download it here).

It’s a much better version of the XMASWOLF game that I posted earlier. The artwork is much nicer, the santas a little more compelling and the game is full of elf-girls in skimpy elf-outfits. What’s not to love? See screenshots here.

Doom 2 X-Mas Nightmare Mod (download here)

There’s almost no words. Imps wearing santa hats. Rampaging Santas that give up their gifts in exchange for hot lead through their skulls. Just watch the video. But not for too long.

Knights of the Old Republic II

Star Wars is in on it too! I haven’t played Knights of the Old Republic, but something about it seem to just scream out, “The main female leads in this game need red, furry bikinis!” Apparently. Follow the link above for screenshots and a download link.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Wolfenstein 3-D wasn’t the last game in the series to get Christmas themed mods! The link above has screenshots and a download link. Return to Castle Wolfenstein can now offer Grinches instead of Nazis, snowballs instead of hand grenades and little red bows on ammunition boxes. Heartwarming, no?

Enjoy the mods! Something about the spirit of Christmas encourages gamers and hackers to give the gifts of the violent mods to their favorite games! Perhaps the game companies aren’t foolish by staying away from this concept after all…

 

That’s it for this series! Merry Christmas!

Save the lemmings, kill the Nazis, destroy the Empire and have a cool Yule!

Christmas in video games: Shockwave/Macromedia/Adobe Flash

See previous entry in the series: “Christmas in video games: Wolfenstein 3-D.”

I had hoped to put together an entry about Snowcraft. I still have a standalone version packed away on CD-ROM, but it runs under Windows 95 and I run Mac OS X 10.5. After too much time fiddling with Windows under Parallels, I still can’t get it out of 16-color mode. So, the focus has changed somewhat.

As I have mentioned before, I held on to my 286 longer than naturally feasible. With a modem, BBSes with FidoNet and door games and Internet shell access, a 286 acting as terminal can do a lot.

So, 1996 was a tough year for me. One of my best friends got a Pentium running Windows 95. He played an mp3 for me–the first time I had heard one (Four Non Blondes – What’s Going On). He showed me Shockwave Flash in the form of the virtual bubble wrap game.

The world had changed. With MP3s and Flash games, where were MOD files and nethack?

Ever since the 1995 South Park “Christmas card” video, sending out “cards” with flash games attached has been an Internet tradition no yet rivaling April Fools’ Day, but it’s getting close. So, here’s a short index of Christmas Flash games.

One dubious achievement of these games is that Flash continues on in contemporary browsers, so there’s no fiddling with Parallels and unsupported OSes to make these work!

1998 – Snowcraft: Every site seems eventually to point back to IconNicholson, who sent it out as a Christmas card. It followed in the steps of the 1998 game Starcraft and the already established Warcraft. Except with snow. (See screenshot above.)

1999 – Elf Bowling: As far as I can tell, this one was not a Christmas card, but pushed out as a Santa-themed game at Christmas time. It has since spawned about 6 sequels including an ill-fated Gameboy edition.

Date uncertain – Penguin Baseball: This game has a date that is hard to pin down, which suggests that it might actually be one of the oldest games of the winter-festivities genre. Nothing helps you celebrate the spirit of the solstice like animal abuse between animals that live on opposite poles!

So, play your heart out with the many, many games on this Flash Games Advent Calendar.

Or check out the world’s smallest (8.4um by 12.4um) nanotech Advent calendar!

Christmas in video games: Wolfenstein 3-D

See the previous entry in the series “Christmas in video games: Lemmings.”

I’m not sure who came up with the idea to make Wolfenstein 3-D into a Christmas game. Somewhere in the early 1990s, it seemed like a good idea. Such a good idea, in fact, that I downloaded it and played it. I put my copy of it, direct from a 1994-era BBS download, preserved on CD-ROM, on box.net for your enjoyment. Download it here.

(NB: The file can also be found on Jason Scott‘s excellent CD-ROM archive. The file is here on PowerDOS 1996.)

Mostly graphic sprites are changed, but a few digitized sounds effects made it in. The regular brownshirt officer is replaced with Santa who announces his ire with “Ho Ho Ho!” and laments his death with “D’oh!” The blue gestapo officers become snowmen throwing deadly snowballs at a lightning pace. Sprites mostly are changed to traditional christmassy versions. Much is unchanged though.

It’s terrifying to hear Horst Wessel Lied and then move into killing Santa, stealing his ammo and moving on to a tasty Christmas pudding to regain health. This game was definitely made by people who think that Silent Night is best sung to the Marines’ Hymn.

From Level 2:

The first frame of the level gives you the feel of what we’re getting into. Snowfall on the walls and mistletoe hanging from the light fixtures. Everything else is the same old gore.

Suits of armor become Nutcracker-style soldiers and giant candy canes deck the halls.

The potted plants become decorated Christmas trees–how cute! But what’s at the end of the hall?

It seems the modders have put their own likeness into the game, via a crummy 1994-era black-and-white scanner. Of course, who wants to replace portraits of Hitler with their own mug?

The medical kits are redrawn as Christmas puddings. Not bad. Regular food plates, ammo clips and such stay the same.

Extra lives now have a little crown on them. Perhaps our hero had a Christmas cracker earlier?

The sprite swap-fest continutes: “Happy New Year” banner (formerly a swastika), Santa’s bag of presents, choo-choo trains next to a bloody corpse and a Christmas bench (?).

My favorite screen-grab of level 2: violently gunning down multiple Santas in order to steal their candy treasures.

Now for level 3:

More portraits of Hitler replaced with homemade scans. Note the festive lights.

Christmas stockings hang from the ceiling. I shudder to think that these take the place of former hanging skeletons.

Decorative snowmen and ammo clips make a jolly holiday combo.

So, you get the point. Here’s a few more of interest from the next two levels.

Level 4:

Paintings of a farmhouse in the snow hang where portraits of Teutonic eagles gripping swastikas once did, this time nicely framed with green garland.

Happy Xmas!

Finally, level 5:

Wreaths and bows take the place of Nazi topiary.

I believe Rudolph is a German name, ja?

After five levels, I couldn’t take it anymore and returned to share the bounty of screenshots. If you want more, you’re going to have to download it yourself. Copies of DOSBox and the shareware version of Wolfenstein are readily found online. Harder to find is XMASWOLF.ZIP, which I’ve put on Box.net. Download it, unzip it and follow the directions inside!

Happy Xmas!

Christmas in video games: Lemmings

(Don’t know what Lemmings is? Play it online here!)

Christmas editions of computer games pop up on occasion. Usually they modify existing games, like Doom or Quake. Or, they can be somehow Christmas-themed on their own: there were a few BBS doors that simulated “chatting” with Santa or sending email to the North Pole.

In 1992, Psygnosis released a Christmas-themed demo of Lemmings. It’s unabashedly an advertisement to get you to pay for the full version of Lemmings. At any rate, it’s an interesting dressing up of an already-known title. Just stick some Santa hats on the lemmings, have them fall out of a wrapped package, and there you go: yuletide fun!

My copy of it came from a shareware disk I bought at a First Saturday Sale in Dallas that year. It made the transition from 5.25″ floppy to CD-ROM and still lives in my desk. If you want to play it, download it from DOS Games archive.

Here’s a few screenshots that I took:

Startup ANSI

Menu

Level 1 (background music: Jingle Bells)

Level 2 (background music: Good King Wenceslas)

Quitting ANSI

Have a Cool Yule, and Save the Lemmings!

Next “Christmas in Video Games” post: Wolfenstein 3-D!