‘Tis the season! And that means it’s time for the fifth annual retro computer Holiday demo / music / game collection to help get you into the spirit of the season!

I’ve been a computer guy for a long time now, but I’ve been enjoying The Holidays even longer.

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 Holiday spirit was downloading and watching Christmas demos on whatever system I had at the time (and every platform out there had a few of them).

Enjoying these demos is a personal tradition that I had, sadly, long left behind until 2010 (the year before I started these posts) when I was inspired to seek out one of the demos I remember best, Audio Light’s 1985 musical slideshow for the Atari ST. With the help of an emulator, I captured it to share online with readers.

A year later, I fired it up again and watched it run through it’s pixellated images and 3-voice musical holiday greeting. As I watched, it occurred to me that it might be nice to gather a few of the other demos I remember from those good ole’ days and present them here, in order to perhaps share some of the holiday cheer that they used to inspire within me.

The following list of demos ranges across a number of platforms of olde and includes the aforementioned Atari ST demo I recorded (see the first video of the 2011 collection). Happy holidays, and I hope you enjoy the shows!

The 2015 collection:



MSX – MSXlegend Christmas Demo 2012



TI-99 – TI-99/4A Holiday Demos (2015) [ contest ]



Amiga – Amiga Xmas Syman (?)



Atari ST- X-Mas MIDI Demo (1987)



Atari 8-bit- Rybagz’s Christmas Demo 2008



Atari ST – Xmas ’88 Demo



PC DOS – Xmas Demo ’90 by Cascada



MSX – Toshiba MSX-1 Xmas Demo (??)



C64 – Merry Xmas from Micronet 800 (1986)



MSX – LarsThe18th Christmas Demo (2012)

The 2014 collection:



C64: Twisted Christmas II (1989) [ Stereo SID chips ]



C64: Christmas Around The World (1987)



C64: Christmas Special 1987



Commodore Pet: Musical Christmas Tree (CURSOR magazine) (1979)



Atari 8-bit: Merry Christmas Demo (1981)



Amstrad CPC: Christmas games and demos



Atari ST: BITS #34 Christmas 2007/8



C64: Lincoln Computer Club Merry Xmas demo



Apple IIgs: Snow – micro demo (2013)

The 2013 collection:



C64: A Twisted Christmas (1988) [ Nice stereo SID action ]



Atari 8-bit: Christmas Collection (1991)



C64: Waveform Christmas Hit Disk (1984)



Apple II: MUSE Santa demo (1980)



C64: Christmas Is Awesome demo (2012)



C64: Christmas Carols (1984)



Various: Season’s Greetings from The Glasgow School of Art (2013)



Tandy CoCo: Christmas songs and animations (1984)



Apple IIgs: FTA X-MAS Demo (1990)

[ The video is interactive – roll over it. A big thanks to Ken Gagne for this one! ]



ZX Spectrum: Computer Christmas Card (1985)

The 2012 collection:



Atari ST: Snowman demo (1987)



MSX: Snowfall demo (2003)



MSX: Christmas Eve demo (???)

The 2011 collection:



Atari ST: Audio Light Christmas demo (1985)



C64: Seasons Greetings from Commodore (1982)



DOS PC: Sierra On-Line’s A Computer Christmas (1986)



C64: Magic Disk Christmas demo (1989)



Amiga: Psygnosis’ Holiday Lemmings 1993



C64: Jingle Disk Christmas demo



Sega Saturn: Christmas NiGHTS (1996)

May this holiday season bring you all faster modems and floppy disks galore!

Other Christmas computer fun out there on the web: