Missed Classic 136: Jingle Bells (1986)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Merry Christmas! When I first started reviewing Christmas adventure games, eleven years ago, I thought that I’d have a lark for a year or three and then we’d be done with Christmas games as a genre. This is our twelfth one! (We covered two games last year.) When the holidays come around, I excitedly open Santa’s bag of presents– our secret spreadsheet with every Christmas game that we know about– and pulled the next game on the list.

The first one was Juleadventurespil, a Danish holiday game written in 1983 and distributed as a type-in. It would be one of our earliest Christmas games, but has the downside that I don’t speak Danish. I may try it another year, but I elected to pass for now.

The second was Gremlins, a 1985 Adventure International game based on the film of the same name. This was a tougher choice. Gremlins, like Die Hard, has a reputation of being a non-Christmas film that is set at Christmas. A review of screenshots show relatively little Christmas content in the actual game and it didn’t seem to be what I want to play when I seek Christmas joy. Plus, I’d have to watch the movie, which I have been actively avoiding since I was a kid. Perhaps next year. 

That leaves us with my third pick: Jingle Bells: A Sleigh Ride with Father Christmas, written in 1986. This was a commercial release for the ill-fated BBC Micro, written by a company better known (if known at all) for its educational software. I failed to get an emulator working, but thankfully a BBC Micro enthusiast website had one working online! Apologies if the fonts don’t look exactly right. 

Let’s get to some Christmas joy!

Yet another adventure creation system.

History

Let’s start by outlining what I know about this game, which isn’t much. No packaging or other materials survive, but the game is credited to Jack and Jill Software, a small educational software house based in Liverpool, England. “Jack and Jill” in this case refers to Jack and Jill Foster. I presume they were a husband-and-wife team, but of the two I can find outside references only to Jack Foster who remained active in the BBC Micro community at least until the late 1990s. 

The key event in the history of Jack and Jill Software– and one of the most important events for BBC Micro and Acorn adventure games in general– was the release of the “Adventurescape” system by A&B Computing Magazine in their July 1985 issue. Adventurescape, which was updated several times in the following years, allowed anyone with basic programming skills to design a simple text adventure with graphics, the likes of which we have seen on several other systems already. As the BBC Micro/Acorn systems ran on a 6502 (the same as the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and Apple II), its capabilities were limited and Adventurescape only supported a basic two-word parser and limited verb list. Nonetheless, Adventurescape opened up possibilities on a platform that did not have many adventure games and allowed smaller development houses like Jack and Jill to produce games inexpensively. As the BBC Micro/Acorn systems were popular almost only in the United Kingdom, this led to a niche industry of UK-produced software for the UK-centric system. 

Based on Adventurescape, Jack and Jill Software released three adventure games for children in 1986: Jingle Bells, The Lost Slipper (based on Cinderella), and The Mad Painter. These were followed by several other educational games in 1987, all of which appear to be developed without an engine like Adventurescape: Tish on Shush, Lester the Lump, Play with Pip, and System Wadgebury. On sites that track these things, some of these titles are credited to Jack Foster only, but that may just be the limited information that we have. As best I can tell, Jingle Bells and other Jack and Jill titles were distributed by mail, potentially by R-Soft, a distributor of BBC Micro and related software titles in the UK. Tish sold for £8 (around £29 today, or $37 USD) and that may have been the range for these non-educational titles as well. Acorn Magazine reviewed at least one of his games in 1987 so they were large enough to be noticed, but probably not “large” by any reasonable definition.

After 1987 however, their story goes cold. With the limited success of the Acorn Archimedes and the wide-spread adoption of more powerful systems than the 8-bit BBC Micro, Jack Foster and his cohort seem to have left gaming. He pops up again in 1997 when he is listed as one of the subscribers and supporters of 8-Bit Software, a tape magazine that doubled as a public domain software library for patrons in the UK. Even by 1997, 8-bit devices like the BBC Micro were “retro” and enthusiasts were collecting the games of the past for preservation. In that spirit, he donated all of his games to that library. It may be good luck that he did, as I believe all of the surviving copies I have found can be traced to that donation rather than his original disk images. 

That is unfortunately where our story ends, at least for now. His name is common enough that there are dozens of possible “Jack Fosters” and even several sets of “Jack and Jill Fosters” that I have found, but none that seem like the correct pairing. I would love to have reached out to him to learn more, but at least for now all we have are his games to speak for him. Let’s play Jingle Bells!

Our Christmas adventure begins! Does he look like a skeleton to you?

Playing The Game

After a jaunty rendition of “Jingle Bells” that goes on for just a bit too long, we can play the game. We are prompted first to write the name of our town before we are dropped into the story:

Father Christmas has invited you to help sort out his presents for this year. Unfortunately, he cannot find his way to your house so you have to help him or you might not get any presents this year! 

As plots go, this one isn’t so bad! We often have to rescue Christmas, so it’s nice that we’re just helping Santa out. Exactly how much eggnog Santa must have drank to have forgotten where we live is a question for another day. We are dropped off (with Santa) to start exploring. Heading north from the North Pole takes us to the South Pole with a message that says “think about it”. I am thinking and still don’t get it. 

The game isn’t very large, but I will do my best to describe it:

• Exploring to the west, we have to “dig” through a snowdrift and are rewarded by a meeting with Jack Frost (who hands us an axe), a penguin on an ice floe, and a directionless snow field. I question what the penguin is doing at the north pole, but given how obviously close the north and south poles are in this game, perhaps it’s no surprise.
  
  
• Exploring to the east, I immediately find a key before heading down a ridge to a frozen lake. Attempting to cross the lake causes Santa to fall in (presumably because of his greater heft…) and he becomes “very cross”. Hypothermia will do that to you. Game over. 

Someone needed to eat fewer Christmas cookies.

I quickly retrace my steps and choose another direction. My path is blocked by a fallen tree in a thick forest. My axe makes short work of the tree, beyond which I discover a strange shed. The door is locked, but my key works and I enter to find and collect a broom. I also discover a compass nearby in a (surprisingly?) green and grassy field.

Moving south from where we start, we climb a high mountain. At the very top, we can continue “up” to fly into the starry sky. (We get a simple animation of shooting stars which is nice.) Further south we have “taken an incorrect turn” because we arrive in a sunny land with a kangaroo. We also find a snowman with a bell nearby, which we pocket.

And that’s all the exploring we can do! Except that the big open snow field is crossable now that we have the compass. That takes us home!

Almost! We arrive in our home town, only to discover that our reindeer are hungry and won’t move any further without grass to eat. I retrace my steps all the way to the grassy field where I picked up the compass and this time there is “grass” as a collectable object. I grab it and feed it to the reindeer. 

Almost there! My neighborhood isn't really this colorful.

Exploring south from the rooftops causes me to crash the sleigh and have to start over again. It’s extremely annoying. 

Heading west this time, I find our chimney, but it’s too dirty to enter. Fortunately, we can sweep it with a broom! I descend and Father Christmas gives me my presents before leaving me to my devices. From there, the only thing I can do is head south and climb into bed. Within moments, it is Christmas morning and “You want to wake everyone up.” The game hopes that I remembered to pick up an item to do that. I did! It is the bell. 

I ring it and we win!

Time Played: 30 min

We didn’t save Christmas, but at least we made it home.

Final Rating

I always feel a little bad rating these Christmas efforts. Some of them have been truly spectacular, but the majority have been thrown together mini-adventures that are intended only to amuse the kids for a few minutes before they start hitting each other with their Christmas oranges. (An orange in a sock hurts a surprising amount, as my brother and I discovered one Christmas very long ago.) This game fits solidly into that category, but I am glad that I played it, if for no other reason than it was nice to play an old adventure again.

As usual, our Christmas games are rated on our “suspiciously similar” EGGNOG system.

Enigmas and Solution-Findability - Jingle Bells is an easy game, but it is intended to be. There are two sudden death locations and several basic object puzzles, but nothing really that stands out as being well done or unfair. I enjoyed the conceit that we were trying to get home, although I’ll have some comments on that later. My score: 2. 

Game UI and Items - I am going to be a little generous, but Jingle Bells includes basic art for many of the locations, a tiny help system with a verb list, and you can save your game. We’ve seen worse, although most of these benefits come from the Adventurescape system. My score: 2. 

Our completed map. Only 23 rooms. 

Gameworld and Story - The story is basic but creative as we embark on a globetrotting adventure to find our way home. Unfortunately, it’s not all fleshed out well, there is no reason why Santa forgot where we live, and many of the locations connect together in weird or impossible ways. Also, we can fly in one of the scenes. For some reason. My score: 1. 

Noises and Pretty Pixels - The game has sound! (At least a little.) And graphics! (At least a little.) I enjoyed the basic illustrations and the sound is fine. Not much more to say. My score: 2. 

Overworld and Environs - Does this feel like a holiday game? Weirdly, yes. Having Santa tag along is a good touch, although not played up all that often. None of the locations connect and we find animals that don’t relate to anything else (penguins and kangaroos), but it all sort of works okay. My score: 2. 

Gregariousness and Thespianism - There is very little text and what we see is basic. I also wish that some of the characters (Jack Frost, the Snowman, etc.) had some more lines. My score: 1. 

Let’s add that up: (2+2+1+2+2+1)/.6 = 17 points! I don’t need to give it any bonuses so we’ll just leave the score as-is. 

That’s not a terrible score for a Christmas adventure! Four of our Christmas games have scored lower, although this one was helped by having both basic graphics and sound. There is a kernel of a good story here and an interesting world, but more than could have been expanded upon in this system at the time. 

If you are still in the mood for more Christmas games, please check out some of our previous holiday adventures:

• Merry Christmas from Melbourne House (1984)
• A Spell of Christmas Ice (1984)
• Crisis at Christmas (1986)
• Elves ‘87 (aka Elf’s Christmas Adventure) (1987)
• Humbug (1990)
• The Christmas Adventure (1983)
• Sanity Clause (1991)
• Paranoia (1987) 
• Santa and the Goblins (1983)
• A Special Christmas Adventure (1986 and 1987)

From all of your friends here at “The Adventurers Guild”, we wish you a joyous and healthy holiday season.

An unexpected message!

A Message From Joe

I miss you guys. This marks my eleventh year as a contributor and (later) an administrator here at “The Adventurer’s Guild”. I am so proud of what we have done and continue to do and I could not have expected when I reviewed Merry Christmas From Melbourne House that I’d still be doing this in 2024. I still remember how they forgot to code an exit from Santa’s Workshop in that game and we had to climb out a window. Good times.

As many of you know, I had to step away this year from writing as regularly as I had been. Between my day job and my family, I have less free time than I used to. Family must come first! But it is also true that after 71 reviewed games, I became burned out. My hope is that some time away will both help me rekindle the excitement that I used to feel when starting up a game for the first time. Jingle Bells was a great start at that– it’s a simple enough game, but it felt nice to get back in front of a text adventure again. 

In the meantime, my son and I discuss obscure British political figures (instead of obscure adventure games) on our podcast “Prime Factors” which you can find in the usual podcast apps. I sing bad parodies of Mary Poppins songs on the James Waldegrave episode, if that’s your thing. This is a labor of love with my son, while he’s still young enough to think a podcast with his dad is fun. 

I wish you all a fantastic holiday season. I hope I’ll “return” to Zork soon.