SkiFree

First inspired by Activision's 1980 Skiing game for the Atari 2600, long before Windows, came along an early textmode version of Ski Free. Chris Pirih had developed the game in Fortran using VT100 escape sequences and text scolling for the VAX/VMS machines at his school, the University of Puget Sound.

The famous graphical version of Ski Free was written in C at home in spare time while Chris was employed by Microsoft, working on OS/2 products. A happy accident occured when the program manager for the Windows Entertainment Pack caught a glimpse of a Windows version, titled WinSki, over the shoulder of Chris during a moment of goofing-off. The program manager would not rest until it was included in the entertainment pack. The marketing department disliked the WinSki name, and decided to change it to SkiFree for release.

A second, enhanced version went into development in 1993 (with plans for "slightly more realistic physics, multi-player, network play, robot opponents, and sounds"), but was shelved after the original source code was lost.

Since then the original source has been rediscovered in 2005, and the author has taken the opportunity to compile a new version of the program native for 32-bit operating environments. In the meantime a fan, Michael Holt, has also made a fan port to the TI-92.

Following the successful completion of a course, the player is granted a sandbox stretch of free, goal-less skiing... at the end of which (at 2000m) an Abominable Snowman charges in from the side to gobble the player up.

Curiously, an intrepid hiker who slogs against gravity up the ski hill will also eventually encounter a Yeti some distance above the start point; a zippy and evasive ski bum who manages to elude the bottom Yeti will discover that it is the same as the top: the ski hill loops, the world a giant snowball -- or at least cylinder.