Mission in Snowdriftland (found discontinued Nintendo-published Flash game; 2006-2007, 2010)

A screenshot of the game.

Status: Found

Date found: 21 Dec '18

Found by: Extratoxic

Mission in Snowdriftland is a Flash-based platform game developed by Extra Tonic and published by Nintendo. The game was used as a sort of advent calendar, advertising recent or then-upcoming Nintendo games every day in new levels from December 1st, to December 24th, 2006. The game was taken offline in 2007. It was temporarily brought back in December 2010, but taken down again. While the game's main website can no longer be accessed, the game itself is still available on the website of its developers, Extra Toxic.

Plot

El Pix, an evil penguin, has stolen game files from the Human World and has taken them to his lair in Snowdriftland. The organization UPIXO (United Pixelheroes Organization) doesn't know what to do, seeing as Snowdriftland is too cold for anybody to survive in. However, the boss of UPIXO's assistant, Professor Schwabbel, finds Chubby Snow, a living snowman, complaining at the front desk because all his video game roles have been bad so far. Professor Schwabbel then asks Chubby to get the game files back. Every day in December of 2006, a new level in Chubby's adventure will become accessible, which will lead up to the final showdown with El Pix on December 24th.

Gameplay

The game is divided into 4 areas: Floating chunks of ice, a forest, an iceberg, and finally El Pix's Lair. Each area has 6 stages (The stage's number corresponds to the day in December until Christmas Eve), for a total of 24. Each stage contains 24 snowflakes, that you can collect to unlock rewards for the game/console files you managed to retrieve in the level. It is not required to beat a stage to access the next one, with the exception of the final stage, but there is a reward for collecting all of the snowflakes. At first, Chubby can only take 3 hits before he dies. A few levels contain hidden power-ups such as extra heart containers, which will add a permanent extra heart to Chubby's life meter.

Status

The game was originally intended to be discontinued on January 14, 2007, but the discontinuation was delayed until the 16th. Accessing the game's website would show a sign of appreciation for the people that played the game. Later, in December 2010, Mission in Snowdriftland was re-released, but has since been taken down again. Nowadays, accessing the main website only shows a favicon of Chubby Snow, and nothing else. Using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to access an older version of the site brings up a message telling the user to download Adobe Flash Player, even if they do have it, but of course, it can't be downloaded on the Wayback Machine.

However, a fully playable version of the game was discovered to still be hosted on the website of its developers, though it is not linked from the homepage.