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

A screenshot of the game.

Status: Found

Date found: 21 Dec 2018 (Original Version)/24 Dec 2020 (Flashpoint version)/Winter 2021 (Remaster)

Found by: P-P (Original version)/Nick Robinson (Flashpoint Version)/Extra Toxic (Remaster)

UPIXO In Action: Mission in Snowdriftland (simply known as Mission in Snowdriftland) is a Flash-based platform game developed by Extra Toxic 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 the player can collect to unlock rewards for the game/console files the player managed to retrieve in the level. It is not required to finish 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.

Availability

The game was originally intended to be discontinued on January 14th, 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, but of course, it can't be downloaded on the Wayback Machine.

On December 21, 2018, the entire sprite sheet of Mission in Snowdriftland was uploaded to The Spriters Resource. The uploader of the sprites, user P-P, had found a fully playable version of the game that was discovered to still be hosted on the website of its developers, though it is not linked from the homepage.

Nick Robinson

On December 24, 2020, just over 2 years after the game was originally found, YouTube user and content creator Nick Robinson would upload a video detailing his own search for the game. The video told the story of how the game was found and the discontinuation of Flash at the end of 2020 making the future of the game uncertain. It was concluded that the game was archived on Bluemaxima's Flashpoint, a program that has archived over 70,000 Flash games due to Flash's end of life.

In the video, he tested and thought that the game's levels are being pulled from the servers that originally hosted the game, meaning the game would become unplayable if the servers ever shut down. However, he later confirmed that the levels are actually being pulled from Flashpoint's own servers and the game is safely archived.

Remaster of MiS

In the same video, it was announced that Mission in Snowdriftland would be remastered by Extra Toxic and would be set to release on Steam in the Winter of 2021. The game would be in fullscreen and in 60 frames per second, with all of the Nintendo content removed due to legal issues.

Due to these same legal issues as well as other technical issues, the version of Mission in Snowdriftland on the developers' website would have to be redirected to an email sign-up page for updates on the remasters' development and release.

Gallery

Nick Robinson's video on his search for Mission in Snowdriftland.

External Links

• Wikipedia page for Mission in Snowdriftland.