Hey, I actually get this obscure xkcd reference:
We did three Entertainment Packs for Windows soon after Windows 3.0 came out (tagline: “Not the most fun you can have with Windows, the only fun”). Each had about eight games. Some like Minesweeper and FreeCell got bundled with subsequent versions of Windows, but I never would have guessed SkiFree would continue to have a cult following nearly two decades later. There are SkiFree updates, ports, exhaustive overviews, numerous videos, cheat codes, fan mail and even fan fiction. The Wikipedia entry has even dug into the philosophical underpinnings of the game (though inexplicably provides no scatological discussions of the sources of and scoring for yellow snow in the game).
The funniest part is (if I recall correctly), the origin of the Abominable Snowman was the game had a stack overflow bug and instead of fixing the bug (hey, we were on Internet time way way before it was popular, cranking these things out in a couple months), the Snowman was introduced as a way to sidestep the bug by devouring the player with a small loophole that if you outran him in a specific way (appreciate the annotated video and opportunity to buy the soundtrack…), you’d start again.
I assume it is just a matter of time before the Snowman gets a movie deal. Every other comic character with any nostalgic appeal already seems to have one.
