Games of Christmas Past 4 – Maria’s Christmas Box

Part 4 of our Games of Christmas Past. A short series remembering the best festive games of yesteryear…

Maria’s Christmas Box

Anco

Amiga (also on Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum)

1989

In winter of 1989, Anco had the genius idea of converting their generic (but very successful) Strip Poker games into a Christmas cash-cow and who better to front the game than Maria ‘metal-bikini’ Whittaker. Full of the joys of the season, those kind hearted chaps (I assume they were chaps) decided that as an extra special Christmas present they would not only reduce the number of girls from their own standard of two to the singular Ms Whittaker, they would also kindly let us pay an extra £5 for the privilege.

The game itself was solid enough and the sight of photo realistic pictures of Maria in her Santa’s little helper suit certainly raises MCB above its main competition Sam Fox Strip Poker on the 16-bits. But Anco in their ultimate wisdom also decided to release the game on the 8-bit home computers. The Commodore 64 version is passable with poorly coloured in digitised graphics, but the hand drawn version for the ZX Spectrum is one of the most disturbing games I have ever seen.

So if you have a hankering this yuletide for a little festive titillation why not fire up Maria’s box. Just make sure you choose the Amiga or ST version if you don’t want Christmas nightmares!

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