A couple years after Alpiner, Bigfoot (1983) (also for the TI-99/4A) featured a yeti. Well, they called it a Bigfoot. But, I mean, a white ape monster is at the top of an icy mountain. What do you think they meant?
Also, look at the manual cover:
Official Description:
"It's 50 degrees below zero, your guide is nowhere to be found, and you are clinging to a snowy ledge by a rather shaky-looking piton. Can you make it to the top of the mountain, collect food and gold on your way up, and cage the raging Bigfoot?"
According to my findings, the first electronic game ever to contain a depiction of a yeti was Alpiner (1981) for the Texas Instruments computer TI-99/4A.
Official Description:
"Climb six of the world's tallest mountains and evade dangerous obstacles. But be careful - the Abominable Snowman is waiting for you atop Mt. Everest!"
It took me a while to find visual evidence of the Abominable Snowman boss at the end of the game. Here is some rare, blurry home-made footage. It's no Patterson-Gimlin, but it should do the job:
Even in the video, he's kinda hard to spot. Using the latest state-of-the-art technology, I have carefully digitally reconstructed what the Alpiner yeti looks like:
HUH... That's it?
Geez. They must not have spent more than two seconds drawing that guy. Not exactly the most auspicious beginning to a long successful career starring in video games.
But this was a whole decade before SkiFree had a yeti try to remove the player from a mountainside.
And it's also probably the first instance of a yeti wearing a propeller hat. But more importantly, it's the first ever instance of one wearing skis, which helped begin his strong association with winter sports, an association which continues to this day.
And since then, more and more submissions for the Paris exhibition have made their way to the web.
Thank you, Pictoplasma, for convincing so many artists to create yeti depictions! You should get some sort of award; you're makin' my job as a yeti-blogger so much easier.