Hello, and welcome to the middle of the week.
Today, I'd like to have a quick chat about Ski Free.
Now Ski Free is a game developed by Chris Pirih, bundled with the Microsoft Entertainment
Pack 3, released in 1991.
The Entertainment Pack series provided a number of titles for users to play in their shiny
new Windows environment, given that most games were still firmly DOS releases.
These aren't huge engrossing games by any stretch of the imagination.
More frivolous titles to play during your lunch break or just provide a welcome distraction
from serious work.
But Ski Free always stood out.
It was mindless, but also addictive.
The premise is very simple.
Using the mouse or arrow keys you control a skier, on his journey down a never ending
mountain.
There are three routes to choose from, selectable by skiing through the appropriate starting
flags.
Slalom is a race against the block whilst keeping between the red and blue flags to
avoid penalties.
Free style is all about racking up the tricks and jumps, activated by clicking the mouse,
whilst Tree Slalom adds further obstacles to the Slalom concept, including snow boarders,
dogs, stumps and trees - obviously.
Of course, if you choose to go around any of these starting flags, then you're in free
mode and you can do as you please.
Not that you couldn't in any of the other modes.
But of course, the most entertaining and memorable part of the game is the Abominable Snow Monster
who descends upon you after 2,000 feet.
You task then is to keep your distance and avoid entering his abominable belly.
There are actually 3 more of these creatures guarding a rectangular boundary 1000m to the
left and right, and even 125 vertically.
There are a few other quirks as well, pressing "F" will double the speed of gameplay, and
the never ending slope is actually a wrap around 2048 metres in any direction, with
16 pixels per metre.
There are also numerous bugs and cheats, which Chris holds his hands up to, given it was
created simply a programming exercise for fun more than anything else.
At it's core, the game is much like Skiing on the Atari 2600, but that was a proper commercial
game, and Ski Free was never really intended to be a commercial title at all...
In early 1991 Chris was working as a programmer for Microsoft, with his main role to write
programming utilities for other programmers.
This was a time when OS/2 was still a Microsoft product and so Chris spent most of his time
assisting with that.
However with Windows 3 gaining momentum, he decided it was time practice some programming
in what could be Microsoft's main product.
Years earlier he had created a skiiing game for VT100 terminals in Fortran, and so took
to task creating a Windows version.
This version would be written in C and created entirely in Chris' spare time.
One day Chris found himself having a quick dabble at work when the Windows Entertainment
pack program manager noticed this landscape whizzing past on his screen, and decided it
NEEDED to be part of the next Windows Entertainment Pack.
Chris had named it WinSki, but it was renamed SkiFree, with Chris paid a token one off fee
for it's inclusion.
Little did he know what an impact it would have on the lives of Windows users.
Most of this, I'll add, I've gleamed from Chris' website at ski.ihoc.net, but Chris
goes on tot write how challenging it was to get good performance out of the slow VGA hardware
of the time, especially with the layers of abstraction between software and hardware
kindly served up by Windows.
To help he designed an algorithm combining overlapping objects into one through a boolean
function.
This created flicker free visuals which even ran on 286 machines couples with EGA graphics.
In 1993 Chris started work on a follow up, with improved physics, networked multi-player,
AI opponents and even sounds, but the source code was lost through the daily tasks of other
projects and SkiFree 2 was lost.
However, this is far from where the story ends.
The Game Boy Color's Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack included Ski Free in 2001, naturally,
given Ski Free was the most memorable of the bunch.
It wasn't quite the same, and there was some irritating music playing throughout, but at
least it was there.
In 2005 Chris found the source code for SkiFree 1.03 and released a 32 bit version, which
you can download and play, even on Windows 10.
This is the dream.
Across the web you'll find numerous sites dedicated to the game, including Chris's own,
which includes sounds for the snow monster, along with a recorded message left by a fan,
to a SkiFree Fan Fiction forum with tales of chilling terror.
"All I had eve known was the Mountain.
In fact, every waking MOMENT found me on the mountain...not that I"
"From its formidable body sprouted two equally spindly arms, each tipped with thin hands...."
"IT's right behind me I can FEEL it charging after ME..."
For me, Ski Free is just a title which just invokes feelings of fun from the mid 90s.
It's one of those games you forget about, until someone mentions "What about that Skiing
game for Windows", and you suddenly think OMG, Ski Free.
What an amazing thing that was.
After which you of course have to find a copy, and play it immediately.
That's kinda what happened with this video actually, and that's why I've been playing
Ski Free for most of today.
Thanks for watching.
Have a great evening.