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 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 25 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 fact that they still work after all these years says a lot about the solid programming used to create them, and Microsoft’s backward compatibility!

The OCG Christmas Screensavers are publicly and freely available for download below as zip files.

Things to note about the OCG Christmas screensavers:

  • By downloading the files below, you agree to not hold Oxford Computer Group liable for any consequences arising from your use of these programs.
  • 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).
  • 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