There are some games that I really want to talk about, but occasionally those games are not long enough or big enough for reviews. This is the feature for these posts as we look at a series of festive games for the Commodore 64, that started on a covertape, and a series of games I added a spiritual sequel too.
Frosty The Snowman
Frosty the Snowman, or “Frosty’s Busy Night”, (it’s known as both) is a fun little curiosity.
It came into my life as the covertape of the first edition of a short lived magazine called Commodore Power. Edited by a future Gamesmaster commentator (and noted Liverpool Fan) Rik Henderson, it only had 3 issues because, surprise surprise, launching a C64 in 1991 is more of a labour of love. All 3 editions are on Archive.org.
Frosty The Snowman sees you navigate a winter obstacle course to get a present and return it to Santa. It’s difficult, with a floaty jump and a weird collision detection, but it stuck with me. It has a cracking soundtrack from Steve Barrett (an individual who produced some underrated tunes). It was given prominence due to being written by one of the writers (Richard Taylor) at the magazine, but it stood out because it was only one of two pretty good games on the cover tapes – the other being BMX Kidz on the second tape.
The game set the tone for the sequels, as although there were issues with the difficulty, the gameplay loop was addictive and with a fun festive soundtrack, it has a soft spot in a lot of gamers heart.
I wasn’t the only person to remember this game fondly as…
Frosty the Snowman 2
…there was a sequel in 2006. Frosty the Snowman 2 was made by Joe Dixon and the game followed the same approach as the original. You can now have 3 classic Christmas tunes (though oddly not Frosty the Snowman), there are restart points, it’s more forgiving with more options and accessibility options. It both has charms and loses out, but well worth checking out. Oddly the difficulty seems to be a bit harder than the original! But it’s well worth doing playing. Coming out over 20 years after the C64 was released and 15 years after the original, Frosty the Snowman 2 is an excellent game to add to your collection. It has the same gameplay loop as the original, but really shows how familiar the best programmers got with the system. It even has sampled speech!
Probably a better game than the original.
Frosty’s Snowed Under!
And so onto my game. Frosty’s Snowed Under! was my take on the franchise which pulls from both games. I liked the scoring system, the music and some of the levels from the original, and I appreciated the restart points, the use of contemporary tunes and the style of the second game. I also wanted to add my own touches, these include:-
- New floor types and enemies.
- A score multiplier on the amount of presents you deliver.
- A difficulty curve as the time to complete each run drops each present you get.
It isn’t made for the Commodore 64 (alas, my C64 programming skills are non-existant), but instead the fantasy console: the Pico-8. Today (December 4th) it’s the game of the day on the Pico-8 Advent Calendar Game Jam. You can play the game below.
I hope that eventually it’s held in the same regard as the previous games in the series. If you like the game, please like and follow the game on Itch as it will really help get it out there. Thanks!