OCG Christmas Screensavers – vintage technology which has stood the test of time
Way back in the 1990s Oxford Computer Group started to develop a series a series of screensavers as an alternative to corporate Christmas cards. They were designed to be a pleasant and amusing decoration for your PC during the festive season.
They turned out to be phenomenally popular, and more than 20 years later we still get requests for them, despite the fact that technology has moved on so far. And they still work!
When we first began creating them in 1995, no suitable multimedia development program existed, so we used Visual C++ which had to work within the constraints of 16 bit Windows 3. They had to be small and incredibly efficient to work on the PCs available at the time.
The OCG Christmas Screensavers are publicly available for download below as zip files.
Things to note about the OCG Christmas screensavers:
- They only run on Windows.
- We offer no support, and no guarantees that they will work at all! (But they worked OK for us when we tested them in November 2017).
- We cannot be held responsible for any consequences that result from you using them.
- They are designed to run during December, like an advent calendar, and develop day by day. But they actually work during any month.
- Please read the Read Me files that accompany the .exe files. Looking back at them now, they are quite amusing in their own right!
- Sometimes you will find them branded as Oxford Computer Group, and sometimes ARIS (which was the brand OCG went under for a while).
Advent Castle (1997)
Download Advent Castle zip file
Village Life (1998)
Download Village Life ZIP file
Victorian Room (1999)
Download Victorian Room zip file
Toy Shop (2000)
Download Toy Shop zip file
Santa’s Grotto (2004)
Download Santa’s Grotto zip file