One of the Atari ST’s unique features was its MIDI interface.

I never learned to play any instruments as a kid, but I have a feeling that if I had had an electronic keyboard to hook up to the Atari, things might have turned out differently.

During the golden years of ACE-St. Louis Atari club (long before I joined) they had a number of “special interest groups” on different topics, including MIDI.

For several years, two MIDI SIG members, father-and-son duo Greg and Randall Kopchak, assembled a Christmas MIDI presentation using holiday music and images they found on Atari BBSes around the country.

Two of these presentations (from 1987 and 1989) are archived on demozoo. I made video captures of the presentations running inside the Hatari emulator.

So sit back, hit play, and enjoy some holiday audio and visuals from yesteryear.

(P.S. My original intention was to share these presentations by embedding the EstyJS emulator in this blog post. I got it tantalizingly close, but there is a problem EstyJS’s audio output that wrecked the experience. I tried to inform EstyJS author Darren Coles of these issues, but never heard back. Anyway, that’s why I was forced to post videos instead)