UPDATE: 12/24/2014 – Blake Patterson has updated his collection of 8-bit and 16-bit holiday related demos for 2014. This is a great collection, and brings back some wonderful memories to those of us who were around at the dawn of home computing. (I’m so old!)
Blake Patterson, over at ByteCellar, has made a holiday tradition of sharing Seasons Greetings in the form of some holiday related demos he’s found from the 8-bit days of the home computer.
I got my first computer, a TI-99/4A, on Christmas morning, 1982. I was 10 years old, and from that Christmas on, it was games and hardware I wanted Santa to leave me under the tree. On through my teenage years, part of my ritual for getting into the Christmas spirit and enjoying the holidays was downloading and watching Christmas demos on whatever system I had at the time (and every platform out there had a few of them).
I remember these demos with a great fondness, as I also owned a TI-99/4A, a Commodore 64, and various Atari home computers, among others.
The demos on Blake’s page range form the early Sinclair, Apple II, and Commodore 8-bit days, all the way up to 16-bit demos from such “advanced” machines as the Apple IIGS, the Amiga, and the Atari ST.
We hope these demos lend some sweet nostalgia to your holidays, just like they did to ours.
Blake’s entire collection of holiday demos is available at ByteCellar.