Winter Wonderlands

Professor Snugglesworth

'Tis the season. Post your favorite winter-themed levels from games.

Try not to mention this one too much:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLsk14X0co4&eurl=&feature=player_embedded

And....go.

HadjiQuest

Yokohama in the first Shenmue. I can't find a picture of it, but the game took place a week or two before Christmas, and within about 8-10 hours of game time, you'd actually hit Christmas.

God, I love(d) that game so much.

LyveWire

The Ice Cap zone from sonic 3.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MzK17RaS-k

A classic winter level

Icemopper

The best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts7XX8hJiws

Graviija

Phendr...oh.

Well, it IS fucking awesome. The music, my god, the music.

Otherwise, Snowpeak Ruin from Twilight Princess.

Macro9

I love Metroid Prime.

PunkBoy

Obligatory Hoth level:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5JOLWk8JIs

cj iwakura

I should check if the Wii version has a similar level.


Edit: It doesn't.

Daebunz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65_HE0IKpEI

El Fantastico

Thread fails without a little Secret of Mana.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc7D45mZB1s

Scooter

cj iwakura wrote: »

Christmas Nights

I loved that game. Got it for free from Blockbuster or something like that. Also, Dale North's Christmas Nights song on OCRemix is one of my favorites on my Christmas playlist.

Peewi

Snowpeak Ruins from Zelda: TP is great.

Brainiac 8

Ice Man's level from the first Mega Man.

It was the first level to make me absoluely hate disappearing blocks. :x

LoveIsUnity

Dammit. I came in to post what cj posted.

Alternately, this is one of my favorite places in Phantasy Star II:



It looked amazing when I first played it in 1989.

subedii

Crysis and Crysis Warhead should really go without saying.

Only image I've got right now, spoilered for H-scroll

Bursar

Icemopper wrote: »

The best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts7XX8hJiws

This man has good taste. Wa-hey!

Jubeh

UEAKCrash

Jazz Jackrabbit: Holiday Hare



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA-S8D8CSo0

leaf

kind of a drawn out video, but still i LOVED the entire snow area in yoshis island

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQxCU0QiihA

Figgy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ad8GszsHIw

So bright... the eyes

Peewi

UEAKCrash wrote: »

Jazz Jackrabbit: Holiday Hare



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA-S8D8CSo0

I had completely forgotten that that existed. I've read that there's actually two different christmas versions of Jazz Jackrabbit, but I've only played the one shown in the video.

EvilBadman

Bursar wrote: »

Icemopper wrote: »

The best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts7XX8hJiws

This man has good taste. Wa-hey!

He is an Icemopper.

Professor Snugglesworth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZnroS3RZfo

citizen059

For me, the Sudden Season event in Asheron's Call in late '99 was the best of them all.

I wish I had some screenshots handy, but this'll have to do.

It has been a month since the first of the barbarians assaulted the gates -- a month of constant assaults and combat, with but a few hours of respite before the next wave threw itself at us. Most are berserkers, attacking with none of the finesse shown even by the Yalain, our old oppressors. They have little knowledge of magic beyond brute force. Yet many have shown the cunning and persistence of the rats that live in the tunnels below the city.

After a thousand years of work -- ten thousand years of exile -- we are finished. The Council of Three, Blessed Fenngar, Ferundi, and Frisander, have been slain. Their bodies lie at the upper gates, battered and blistered to a final death by the barbarians. The outlanders swept through the tunnels, and Frore below, killing all the Initiates and Acolytes who dared oppose them, reducing our golem servants to rubble. The squares and passages are littered with corpses. We now have but a pitiful remnant of our forces.

So many years we spent, weaving our spells around our Great Work, bending it to our needs. At last the heat of the deep earth was being drawn into it, contained. The world had cooled. Snow covered the deserts. Soon it would have been a frozen wasteland, suited only to ourselves. With all our enemies dead, we could finally return to Gelid. The Old Lords which revile us, the barbarians, the Olthoi . . . that idiot boy of Yalain sitting smug and aloof in his lofty fortress -- all would have passed into ice and memory.

When the Work was assaulted, to our own surprise it defended itself like a living creature, casting flame spells of incredible strength. It slew many, drove the others back again and again, regenerating with astonishing speed. In the end, however, it was overwhelmed. The Great Work of Frore lies shattered, bleeding its warmth back into the undeserving earth.

There is a darkness now where the Work fell. No matter how much light we place in the room, that spot remains dim and strange. I cannot explain it. Perhaps Frisirth, with his intuitive understanding of the Work, could have.

How did we come to this? The ancient prophecies of the Falatacot said the Fourth Sending would begin in a city of Dericost named Frore. We were the nobility of High Gelid, Dericost's royal province. We established Frore to fulfill the prophecy, and extended our lives at terrible cost to buy the needed time. Yet we are broken, and the world recovers from our near-success. For this we fled the lands of the Yalain? For this we accepted the ritual of undeath, the burden of rotting flesh?

We have been our own gods. Perhaps the old gods have brought us low to teach us humility again. I mean the gods of the swamp and the deep earth, the true gods of terrible aspect who live in ageless splendor.

These walls of stone and marble have long seemed to me an enclosing womb, protecting us from the unearned enemies we have suffered for millennia. We came here to build a holy city, from which we might return home in triumph after our long exile. Now, I look at the walls, and can only think of them cracking and crumbling, collapsing inward, burying us in the vault of eternity into which so many of the Old Lords were thrown.

I rest uneasy, when rest can be had. I feel cold.

--Journal passage from a fallen Gelidite Lord

DasUberEdward

Professor Snugglesworth wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZnroS3RZfo

Such a good song.

SirUltimos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIVRe-7QjHA

Since FreezeEasy Peak is already posted...

SirUltimos

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv7ZU1RCYZI

But this is the next best thing.

subedii

Well since we're posting videos:

Crysis Warhead. Basically the scenario behind this level is that everything got flash frozen in an instant (including the surrounding ocean area), and aliens started popping out of the woodwork. Technically mild spoilers for anyone who hasn't played the game yet and intends to later (if they want to see all this level for the first time themselves). Guy uses cloak mode way more than I normally would, but hey, it's his game.

Oh, preferably click the link and watch in HD.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2XRPRrprZ20

Icemopper

EvilBadman wrote: »

Bursar wrote: »

Icemopper wrote: »

The best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts7XX8hJiws

This man has good taste. Wa-hey!

He is an Icemopper.

Good point!

Pej

Coming out of left field with this one but it's what I thought of first. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault multiplayer map DM_5 aka Snowy Parks. Although it seems like it was pretty unpopular (probably due to the massive change in pace over other DM maps) I've got so many fond memories of that map. Sitting in one spot, next to a team mate, listening to the distant sound of crunching foot steps in the snow getting closer and closer, wondering if it was friend or foe, and knowing that by the time you found out it would almost be too late and you'd only have a few seconds to kill or be killed. Great atmosphere, very immersive, and often awesomely tense.

WotanAnubis

I remember, many many years ago (about 2, to be precise), Nintendo of Europe had an interesting promotion going on. They had an Advent Calender, but instead of a small chocolate each day, you got a level of a platform game called Mission in Snowdriftland.

It was a fun little platformer and it had some truly excellent music.

I actually managed to find a few pieces of this little gem on Youtube. Unfortunately, none of them feature any of that excellent music, playing either no or absolutely crap music instead.


Tribute

Wait, this one actually does have some of the original music. Even if the volume is very low.
Final Boss

ChewyWaffles

Any of the snowy levels on CoD 2.

homewrecker4

Not sure if it was already posted but:

Flanoir from Tales of Symphonia

I briefly looked on youtube for a video but the ones I found so far all contained spoilers and didn't really show off the town.

Taximes

WotanAnubis wrote: »

I remember, many many years ago (about 2, to be precise), Nintendo of Europe had an interesting promotion going on. They had an Advent Calender, but instead of a small chocolate each day, you got a level of a platform game called Mission in Snowdriftland

This was the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread.

Every year I hope they'll put out another one, but no luck so far.

I still have all the wallpapers/icons that you got as a reward for beating each level.

Xagarath

Snowpeak Ruins, without a doubt.
Amazing stuff.

Dodge Aspen

The first thing I thought of was World 6 in Super Mario Bros. 3. Mostly because that is when Tanooki suits and Hammer Bros. suits became more plentiful. You could also melt ice blocks with your fire power.

I was really hoping for an updated version of Snowdriftland to be released on Wii Ware this year. Seem like a missed opportunity, to me.