A game not often mentioned in online ‘Christmas video game’ lists, The Official Father Christmas Game is one of the better Christmas-themed video games that I’ve found so far. It was developed by Enigma Variations and published by Alternative Software for the Amstrad, Spectrum and C64 in 1989. All proceeds from the game went to the famous children’s charity, Save The Children.
Continue reading The Official Father Christmas Game, Amstrad CPC
Although you may laugh at the title of this Christmas-themed game, it’s not called that because the publisher (Alternative Software) went to Lapland to buy an official license from Santa… It’s called that because it is an official tie-in with the famous children’s charity, Save The Children. The game was sold (for a reasonable £2.99, for the Spectrum, Amstrad and C64) in 1989 and all profits went to Save The Children.
Continue reading The Official Father Christmas Game, ZX Spectrum
Created in association with Save The Children, The Official Father Christmas Game was developed by Enigma Variations and published by Alternative Software for the C64, Spectrum and Amstrad in 1989. Profits from the game went to the aforementioned children’s charity.
Continue reading The Official Father Christmas Game, Commodore 64
Santron is a Christmas-themed vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up created by Sarah Jane Avory and first released for the Commodore 64 in 2019.
Sarah programmed the game and created all the graphics and sound herself, and it is very good. Santron is actually a variation of Sarah‘s previous game, Neutron.
Neutron is a vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up created by Sarah Jane Avory and first released for the Commodore 64 in 2019.
It was created for the 2019 RGCD C64 16KB cartridge game development competition, and is actually a re-coding of a game Sarah created in the 1980s but that went unreleased (because the publisher she was tied to at the time went out of business, before the game’s release), and was eventually lost (she regrettably threw away the disks with the source code after moving house years later).
Steve Crow‘s classic Spectrum game, Starquake, was converted to the BBC Micro by Kenton Price and published by Bubble Bus in 1987.
Graphically, the game is rather chunky because it uses a low-resolution screen mode (presumably so that more colours can be used on-screen at the same time), but the gameplay is mostly the same as the original.
Ghosts ‘N Goblins Arcade is another 2015 release from Nostalgia that re-makes the original (flawed) Elite port of Ghosts ‘N Goblins, and it features completely new graphics, sound, and gameplay features that bring it more into line with the original Ghosts ‘N Goblins arcade game.
This 1986 Commodore 64 conversion of Capcom‘s classic Ghosts ‘N Goblins was programmed by Chris Butler. Chris also created the graphics, which are pretty good overall, if a little spartan in places. Mark Cooksey created the music.
Created by Nostalgia in 2015, Commando Arcade is a reworking of the original C64 Commando port by Elite, but with completely new graphics, sound, and levels. So, rather than it being written from scratch, the game was built around the framework of an existing game.
Programmed by Chris Butler, with graphics by Rory Green and Chris Harvey, and music by Rob Hubbard, the Commodore 64 conversion of Capcom‘s arcade game Commando is considered to be a classic 8-bit game, even though it was put together very quickly (ie. rushed-out) by publisher Elite Systems.
After acquiring the official license they wanted it out in time for Christmas 1985, which gave the coders around four months to make the game. As a result Commando on home computer systems was a cut-down version of the arcade game, with fewer levels than the original and somewhat bare-bones graphics.
The King of Grabs 