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Christmas graphics and sound demos were common software for 1980s home computers. Most of them were public domain and circulated by users groups, while there were a few commercial offerings, such as the Ziggy Christmas Card disk. There were also a few Christmas-themed games. For the holidays, we’ve added an ‘xmas’ directory containing a number of such programs for the Apple II inside our microM8 Apple II emulator.

You can find the xmas directory in microM8 at appleii/disk images/xmas/ or you can download a zip file containing the files to use in other emulators (why?) or on real hardware: xmas.zip

Of course, another thing you can do with microM8 is print real retro Christmas signs and cards using The Print Shop and microM8’s emulated Epson MX-80 colour dot-matrix printer. You can find a pre-configured Print Shop disk at /appleii/disk images/applications/print shop/the print shop (color version).nib

There are also a few graphics library disks in that folder with holiday-themed fonts, borders and images.

Once your card or sign has finished printing, wait 15-30 seconds (depending on your settings) for the vector PDF to appear in your ~/microM8/MyPrints/ folder.

To enhance your Print Shop experience we’ve added a number of public domain graphics library disks in /appleii/disk images/applications/print shop/ps_graphics_libraries/

These disks contain all sorts of additional images to use with The Print Shop, including holiday-themed graphics. There’s an index.txt file that will help you find the disk with the graphics you’re looking for!

Have fun making your holiday season a retro one!