The Byte Before Christmas - Atari 2600
The Byte Before Christmas - Atari 2600
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Prologue
The collection of games in The Byte Before Christmas tell the story of a Christmas that almost never was. A Christmas that was saved by the hands of a few good people, who stood up to an evil army. When dark forces conspired, they would not back down. The story of their bravery has never been shared with the world before now. Read of their deeds, and step into their shoes, that one fateful night before Christmas.
The Byte Before Christmas is a collection of four holiday-themed games for your Atari 2600. When you fire up The Byte Before Christmas, you'll be presented with a menu that allows you to select from one of the four games.
Each game included in The Byte Before Christmas is briefly described below:
- Santa's Scabs -- You're a victim of the economic recession, and after hearing the news that Santa was hiring replacement workers, you hitched a ride to the North Pole immediately. Crossing picket lines is dangerous business, but you've been learning the secret art of Ninjitsu. And really, who could resist the chance to save the day and put a few bucks in his pocket too?
- Christmas Adventure -- "I see the Grinch has been up to his old tricks," you say to yourself as you survey the devastation of Whoville. Once again he has managed to steal all of Whoville's presents and frighten off all of its residents. The town was no match for the Grinch, his dog Max, and his band of evil toys. While the Grinch has escaped with the sack of stolen presents to his lair in the mountains, Max and the evil toys continue to wreak havoc in the town. You're the only one left to reclaim the stolen presents and save Christmas. Inspecting the town's ruins and hoping to find some items that might help you in this Adventure, you head out into the cold dark night alone...
- Bell Hopper -- Humanity slept. The animal kingdom did not. The most magical of all creatures, the bunny rabbits, sensed that an evil magical deed had been performed. Being the keepers of good, the rabbit elders knew they had to undo this wrong. They sent forth their youngest jumper. He alone was pure enough to see the magical sky bells, and he alone could jump high enough to ring them. The elders watched him leave on his journey with much anticipation. Would he be able to play the bell song and wake up humanity from the ill slumber?
- Naughty List -- The Elf Union has gone on strike! In Naughty List you play as Santa. Your mission is to drop packages full of explosives onto the ugly union buildings, completely destroying them. Each package you drop needs to hit the building dead-center to cause destruction. Packages that miss the mark have no effect. Larger buildings will need multiple hits to reduce them to rubble. But your mission isn't as easy as it sounds. Your reindeer are tired from delivering presents, so as you fly over the block your deer will drop closer and closer to the buildings. If you smash into a building you'll lose a deer, and you only have three to spare! And take care not to drop packages onto innocent bystanders below!
The Byte Before Christmas was a collaboration between several homebrew authors and artists, including Jarod Kitchen (Santa's Scabs), Todd Holcomb (Christmas Adventure), Tomas Härdin (Bell Hopper), Mike Saarna (Naughty List), Illya Wilson (Pixel Art), Brian Ostrowski (Label and Manual artwork), Fred Quimby (batari Basic), and more.
Additional Information
The Byte Before Christmas includes the game cartridge and full-color, 16 page manual. The Byte Before Christmas is available in NTSC and PAL60 versions. Please select the correct version above for your locale.
Get a The Byte Before Christmas Box!
If you'd like a boxed copy of The Byte Before Christmas, please select "Box Upgrade: Yes" at the top of the page before adding The Byte Before Christmas to your cart. Our boxes are professionally printed and include a box insert to hold your The Byte Before Christmas cartridge in place. We want you to play our games, so we have not sealed or shrinkwrapped the boxes in any way, allowing you easy access to the game cartridge and manual.
These boxes are the same size as boxes Atari produced for their games "back in the day". They look great sitting on a shelf with your other boxed homebrew games, or alongside games from the classic Atari 2600 library. We only have a limited number of boxes for each game, and there is no guarantee they will become available again once our supplies are exhausted. Click on the images to the right to see larger photos of the box.
| Number of Players | 1 |
| Controller | Joystick, Paddle Controller (Bell Hopper) |
| Cartridge Size | 32K w/SARA RAM |
| Programming | Jarod Kitchen, Todd Holcomb, Tomas Härdin, Mike Saarna |
| Pixel Art: | Illya Wilson |
| Label and Manual Artwork: | Brian Ostrowski |