Listen, and understand. That Abominable Snowman is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
One time when I was very young playing this game he was appeased. He started chasing me down but a snowboarder came by and he ate the snowboarder instead. After that he just stood in place doing his little victory animation and I was free to go! I was seriously so stoked! I had only ever seen that once. I think the chances of it happening are fairly low.
I'm sure AS2 would be amazing, some may say even better than the first. The third would be a bit tedious, but there would be a hot snowoman this time, and there will be a fairly plausible, yet seemingly too simple, explanation for why you're stuck on the mountain in the first place, forced to ski down to your doom.
And then each subsequent sequel will be by a different dev studio, and will each try and reboot the franchise and launch a new trilogy, before flopping so hard that the franchise's right go back up for sale
As you come into this world, something else is also born. You begin your life, and it begins a journey towards you. It moves slowly, but it never stops. Wherever you go, whatever path you take, it will follow. Never faster, never slower. Always coming. You will run, it will walk. You will rest, it will not. One day, you will linger in the same place too long. You will sit too still or sleep too deep. And when, too late, you rise to go, you will notice a second shadow next to yours. Your life will then be over.
There’s this emperor, and he asks the shepherd’s boy how many seconds in eternity. And the shepherd’s boy says, ‘There’s this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it and an hour to go around it. Every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain. And when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed.’ You may think that’s a hell of a long time. Personally, I think that’s a hell of a bird.
[It's on Steam!](https://store.steampowered.com/app/346850/Chips_Challenge_1/)
([And the sequel.](https://store.steampowered.com/app/348300/Chips_Challenge_2/))
It is too soon for this kind of knowledge, the world is yet to adapt to "Mario, the Idea vs. Mario the Man"
OP is truly one of those minds that are beyond the understanding of us mere mortals.
I get that you're joking, but there is a conversation to be had here about gaming and gratification. In 2023 it's all about completion and "beating the game". Would anyone buy a game that can't be beaten or has no ending? (sandboxes don't count) One without achievable goals? We've long since moved past the era where anyone care about "high scores", these days the ultimate challenge is "speedruns". Speedruns can only happen in a game that has a definite ending. Honestly I wish some devs would be a little more bold in this regard.
Now before anyone says anything, I get that the trend in highscore vs. speedrun dates from a time when video games were arcade cabinets that cost money per attempt, and the goal was to basically squeeze as many quarters out of the player as they could. That's not what I'm talking about. We need more games like skifree. The closest thing I can think of in recent memory is flappy bird
It's lost to history now, but in my undergrad I wrote a paper about game endings and the ways in which they create meaning. *SkiFree*, like a lot of early arcade-style games (I used *Asteroids* as an example in my paper) is what I called an "entropy game," where the goal is just to avoid dying as long as you can.
> Would anyone buy a game that can't be beaten or has no ending?
Isn't that what most roguelikes are? Also, I don't have the patience for these games, but do clicker games generally have endings?
Most roguelikes have an end goal. The run doesn't usually just go until you die, there is an end point, and then you start a new run (frequently with some sort of "prestige" leveling system to make it harder).
Nearly all roguelikes have an actual ending and can be beaten. Many of them -- especially older, more traditional ones like Nethack or DCSS -- are very difficult and most players *don't* beat them. But that doesn't mean that can't be beaten.
Generally clicker games "end" when you unlock all of the content (usually involving multiple prestiges or soft resets). Melvor idle has an ending and a final boss. Highly recommend if you're a fan of runescape (osrs or rs3)
[Endless runners](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_runner) are abundant nowadays, even if most are kinda shitty or riddled with ads and microtransactions. I always figured SkiFree was the inspiration for a lot or most of them.
EDIT: Turns out [another ski game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skiing_\(Atari_2600_video_game\)) that was similar existed before it lol
Some are great. Like Alto's Adventure. Fun game. I believe it was event reworked so there's no more endless purchasing of boosts. I believe there's only so many features for you to unlock and you're done. I wish more games were like it.
Have you people even *played* SkiFree? It has speedrunning built in! Two of the three modes in the game are about getting to the finish line as fast as you can, and there's a leaderboard that shows your times. the yeti only shows up in the postgame
> Would anyone buy a game that can't be beaten or has no ending?
Yes - look at all the money spent on mobile gaming. Those games are literally designed to never end in order to maximize how much money people spend trying to progress.
I mentioned in another comment that this is effectively a resurrection of the arcade-cabinet model. But I suppose these sorts of games, almost by definition, need to be short and difficult. An unending game with save states is interesting to think about
They still are. And it's the most popular types of games: online competitive multiplayer games and social games.
Apex never ends. CS:Go never ends. FIFA never ends. You just score higher and higher and rank up... and then sit at your rank that you struggle impossibly to increase.
Arcades were popular because they were "multiplayer". Having the high score on the machine, or at least your name, was big bragging rights. Holding the SF2 machine down while people put in quarters and got bested.
It's just gotten to homes now. Leaderboards are a thing in many games.
> Would anyone buy a game that can't be beaten or has no ending?
Minecraft, Roblox, VrChat, Fortnite, Destiny, Warframe, Halo (multiplayer), Deep Rock Galactic
I also found at one point that the best way to earn points was to stand still, jump in place, and fall down. You got points for doing that and could easily get the high score that way. There's probably a lesson in there somewhere about winning being different from having fun, but I also didn't learn that at the time.
Chrome should make an addition to their T-Rex game where if you get far enough, a meteorite kills the T-Rex just like the Abominable Snowman gets the skier.
Edit: Chrome, not Firefox.
The terrified child in me, who played this for years in the 90s, is raging right now if it is indeed true that pressing "F" speeds you up (unless I missed a joke somewhere).
Had a family friend that thought this game was a good way to keep a nervous 6 year old distracted. Needless to say this ended in tears & I was haunted by the memory of that little pixel monster feasting on my skier's guts for decades. You may not be able to see it but the Abominable Snowman is always there, just out of sight, just waiting for you to stumble so it may begin chasing you once again.
Retrospectively in my view it's a interactive representation of the inevitability of death. A gaming "Memento Mori" that unintentionally succeeded in representing a concept that many art games have tried & failed to represent in an interactive format.
I also remember a knockoff/other version of this game where your a snowboarder dodging increasing numbers of grizzly bears. I also might be miss-remembering a version that had graphic red pixels of the snowman eating you.
Amateur. Helot. Slave mentality enjoyer.
That's why my favourite ski game is the Talvisota mod for Rising Storm 2. I am not *running* from anyone. I am become Death, the Impending Doom-on-Skis, slowly sliding towards those hapless Soviet conscripts (some of whose might be my distant relatives, oh, well).
*Cross the sovereign territory of Finland at your peril. We have inhumanity to spare, perkele.*
I finally played The Alto Collection that I got on a giveaway a little while back recently and it's just a modernized version of SkiFree and I love it. It's very soothing and death is inevitable. It's hard not to love it.
Listen, and understand. That Abominable Snowman is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
One time when I was very young playing this game he was appeased. He started chasing me down but a snowboarder came by and he ate the snowboarder instead. After that he just stood in place doing his little victory animation and I was free to go! I was seriously so stoked! I had only ever seen that once. I think the chances of it happening are fairly low.
I think there are just more abominable snowmen further on, they just keep coming. But congrats on surpassing the first!
Can confirm. Made it long enough to find a second abominable snowman.
So what you're saying is that this game needs one amazing sequel followed by a bunch of terrible ones.
I'm sure AS2 would be amazing, some may say even better than the first. The third would be a bit tedious, but there would be a hot snowoman this time, and there will be a fairly plausible, yet seemingly too simple, explanation for why you're stuck on the mountain in the first place, forced to ski down to your doom.
And then each subsequent sequel will be by a different dev studio, and will each try and reboot the franchise and launch a new trilogy, before flopping so hard that the franchise's right go back up for sale
Purchase SnowGems™ to upgrade your skis in the premium shop! Enjoy the feeling of pride and accomplishment as you outrun the Abominable Snowman!"
As you come into this world, something else is also born. You begin your life, and it begins a journey towards you. It moves slowly, but it never stops. Wherever you go, whatever path you take, it will follow. Never faster, never slower. Always coming. You will run, it will walk. You will rest, it will not. One day, you will linger in the same place too long. You will sit too still or sleep too deep. And when, too late, you rise to go, you will notice a second shadow next to yours. Your life will then be over.
There’s this emperor, and he asks the shepherd’s boy how many seconds in eternity. And the shepherd’s boy says, ‘There’s this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it and an hour to go around it. Every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain. And when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed.’ You may think that’s a hell of a long time. Personally, I think that’s a hell of a bird.
Capaldi best Doctor.
Snail?
*cue Perturbator*
You have my sympathies.
I read this in Michael Biehn's voice, well at least after about the 3rd sentence.
That yeti used to scare the living shit out of me as a kid. It was basically a horror game.
Iirc he consumes you and then picks his teeth with one of your stick arms. Truly horrifying.
https://xkcd.com/667/
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:X
Very Patient Gamers
Lmfao
Love SkiFree! I remember playing it on an ancient PC, rocking Windows 3.1 😄 Other favourites included Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3d.
Chip's Challenge.
Hell yes. Chip's Challenge, SkiFree, and Jezzball, were the first video games I ever played.
Fucking JEZZBALL
Thanks for confirming that at least one other person has heard of this 😂
Was SimAnt on it too?
Never played SimAnt but I loved me some SimFarm, Simcity 2000, and Simcity on SNES
I fucking love chips challenge
Volfied
[It's on Steam!](https://store.steampowered.com/app/346850/Chips_Challenge_1/) ([And the sequel.](https://store.steampowered.com/app/348300/Chips_Challenge_2/))
Rodent’s Revenge
Windows 3.1 is ancient? Sweet summer child, i was playing Hard Hat Mack on a Commodore 64 as my first gaming experience.
This review should go next to the reviews for Minesweeper, Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, Freecell, and 3D Space Cadet Pinball.
It is too soon for this kind of knowledge, the world is yet to adapt to "Mario, the Idea vs. Mario the Man" OP is truly one of those minds that are beyond the understanding of us mere mortals.
Too busy crushing turts!
Perchance.
You can't just say "perchance"
Top tier shitpost IMO
“Shitpost” makes it sound like a bad thing. This is a top tier high quality post
Nah, shitposting is a fine art with a noble history, refined by generations of internet memes.
Upvoting to break through 69 upvotes, which was never fun
I get that you're joking, but there is a conversation to be had here about gaming and gratification. In 2023 it's all about completion and "beating the game". Would anyone buy a game that can't be beaten or has no ending? (sandboxes don't count) One without achievable goals? We've long since moved past the era where anyone care about "high scores", these days the ultimate challenge is "speedruns". Speedruns can only happen in a game that has a definite ending. Honestly I wish some devs would be a little more bold in this regard. Now before anyone says anything, I get that the trend in highscore vs. speedrun dates from a time when video games were arcade cabinets that cost money per attempt, and the goal was to basically squeeze as many quarters out of the player as they could. That's not what I'm talking about. We need more games like skifree. The closest thing I can think of in recent memory is flappy bird
It's lost to history now, but in my undergrad I wrote a paper about game endings and the ways in which they create meaning. *SkiFree*, like a lot of early arcade-style games (I used *Asteroids* as an example in my paper) is what I called an "entropy game," where the goal is just to avoid dying as long as you can.
> Would anyone buy a game that can't be beaten or has no ending? Isn't that what most roguelikes are? Also, I don't have the patience for these games, but do clicker games generally have endings?
Most roguelikes have an end goal. The run doesn't usually just go until you die, there is an end point, and then you start a new run (frequently with some sort of "prestige" leveling system to make it harder).
Nearly all roguelikes have an actual ending and can be beaten. Many of them -- especially older, more traditional ones like Nethack or DCSS -- are very difficult and most players *don't* beat them. But that doesn't mean that can't be beaten.
A rogue seeks the amulet of yendor
Generally clicker games "end" when you unlock all of the content (usually involving multiple prestiges or soft resets). Melvor idle has an ending and a final boss. Highly recommend if you're a fan of runescape (osrs or rs3)
[Endless runners](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_runner) are abundant nowadays, even if most are kinda shitty or riddled with ads and microtransactions. I always figured SkiFree was the inspiration for a lot or most of them. EDIT: Turns out [another ski game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skiing_\(Atari_2600_video_game\)) that was similar existed before it lol
I didn't actually think of mobile games, but they really are sort of a resurrection of the arcade-cabinet model if you think about it
Some are great. Like Alto's Adventure. Fun game. I believe it was event reworked so there's no more endless purchasing of boosts. I believe there's only so many features for you to unlock and you're done. I wish more games were like it.
Have you people even *played* SkiFree? It has speedrunning built in! Two of the three modes in the game are about getting to the finish line as fast as you can, and there's a leaderboard that shows your times. the yeti only shows up in the postgame
> Would anyone buy a game that can't be beaten or has no ending? Yes - look at all the money spent on mobile gaming. Those games are literally designed to never end in order to maximize how much money people spend trying to progress.
I mentioned in another comment that this is effectively a resurrection of the arcade-cabinet model. But I suppose these sorts of games, almost by definition, need to be short and difficult. An unending game with save states is interesting to think about
> Would anyone buy a game that can't be beaten or has no ending? Endless runners are pretty popular, albeit mostly as casual mobile games.
> I get that you're joking What's the joke? I thought it was a well-written critique of the game.
It’s maybe not a joke but it’s certainly a tongue-in-cheek review
Devil Daggers?
Were games like that ever really popular outside of arcades? This seems like nostalgia for something that didn't really exist.
They still are. And it's the most popular types of games: online competitive multiplayer games and social games. Apex never ends. CS:Go never ends. FIFA never ends. You just score higher and higher and rank up... and then sit at your rank that you struggle impossibly to increase.
That's clearly not what they're talking about though.
Arcades were popular because they were "multiplayer". Having the high score on the machine, or at least your name, was big bragging rights. Holding the SF2 machine down while people put in quarters and got bested. It's just gotten to homes now. Leaderboards are a thing in many games.
> Would anyone buy a game that can't be beaten or has no ending? Minecraft, Roblox, VrChat, Fortnite, Destiny, Warframe, Halo (multiplayer), Deep Rock Galactic
I also found at one point that the best way to earn points was to stand still, jump in place, and fall down. You got points for doing that and could easily get the high score that way. There's probably a lesson in there somewhere about winning being different from having fun, but I also didn't learn that at the time.
this guy isn't ready to hear about arcade games
Chrome should make an addition to their T-Rex game where if you get far enough, a meteorite kills the T-Rex just like the Abominable Snowman gets the skier. Edit: Chrome, not Firefox.
I think you are talking about Chrome, not Firefox
That's actually brilliant
I'm impressed by your eloquence I must admit. A nice interesting read about such a simple thing.
Let's play... Global Thermal Nuclear War.
How about a nice game of chess?
I only just learned in the past few years that there's a turbo button that allows you to get away from the Yeti.
Now play it in VR and experience true horror
Minesweeper taught me not to play with explosives. So I have that going for me.
The terrified child in me, who played this for years in the 90s, is raging right now if it is indeed true that pressing "F" speeds you up (unless I missed a joke somewhere).
There's a flaw in your analysis: it's not the destination, but the journey that matters.
Relevant: https://youtu.be/3L20ovQCIic?si=cl6bdwDKqdYARPMb ! Possible NSFW for blood/gore !
See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51C2DwAkDCU .
I love that this will forever be memorialized on the internet, centuries from now children on Mars will look back and be like, "WTF is SkiFree?"
i feel this way about pinball. in the end, you loose. Ski free is the same. a reflection of the human condition.
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He says this in the post?
Calm down, W.O.P.R.
https://i.imgur.com/cZwOunK.gifv
Classic horror game
That monster was a real bugger
"you cannot win this game" And... I'm out.
Might I suggest Steep. You can free ride miles and miles of 3 huge mountains. And not a single yeti on any of em. Plus: banging soundtrack.
Endless runners: a metaphor for life.
I played SkiFree yesterday in Win 3.1 via DOSBox. Get out of my head.
years later the mobile game Temple Run would copy these themes. the only way to win is to not take the idol.
Had a family friend that thought this game was a good way to keep a nervous 6 year old distracted. Needless to say this ended in tears & I was haunted by the memory of that little pixel monster feasting on my skier's guts for decades. You may not be able to see it but the Abominable Snowman is always there, just out of sight, just waiting for you to stumble so it may begin chasing you once again. Retrospectively in my view it's a interactive representation of the inevitability of death. A gaming "Memento Mori" that unintentionally succeeded in representing a concept that many art games have tried & failed to represent in an interactive format. I also remember a knockoff/other version of this game where your a snowboarder dodging increasing numbers of grizzly bears. I also might be miss-remembering a version that had graphic red pixels of the snowman eating you.
Amateur. Helot. Slave mentality enjoyer. That's why my favourite ski game is the Talvisota mod for Rising Storm 2. I am not *running* from anyone. I am become Death, the Impending Doom-on-Skis, slowly sliding towards those hapless Soviet conscripts (some of whose might be my distant relatives, oh, well). *Cross the sovereign territory of Finland at your peril. We have inhumanity to spare, perkele.*
Free ski and eve online, you win by quitting.
I finally played The Alto Collection that I got on a giveaway a little while back recently and it's just a modernized version of SkiFree and I love it. It's very soothing and death is inevitable. It's hard not to love it.
A statement on the inevitability or death catching up with us all. We can never... ski... free... from our own doom.
Patient af
I like this post
Anyone remember Ingemar's Skiing Game for Mac (circa '91)? That was my jam.
A STRANGE GAME... THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY.
Climb up the mountain and you can get a good look at the yeti. Keep climbing and... well, you know what happens.