TSMC’s Christmas Card evokes a retro 8-bit winter wonderland — ‘pixelated’ kids play Breakout with snowballs, carving out a festive scene

TSMC has shared a super-cool digital greeting card with its trusted partners, most important customers, and other insiders. The animation cleverly mixes retro-nostalgic 8-bit style gaming visuals and mechanics, symbolic elements of TSMC’s iconic logo, and (of course) a charming seasonal scene. We aren’t on TSMC’s Christmas card list, so we are thankful to Co-Founder & Research VP at CounterPoint, Neil Shah, for sharing the festive message from the world’s most important contract chipmaker.

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No surprise, the TSMC greeting card begins with the iconic logo, which features type set above a representation of a silicon wafer containing both good (white) and defective (black) tiles. A TSMC veteran once also said this ‘wafer map’ has a second meaning, inspired by Japanese theater. Interpreting this alternative symbolism, the black dies represent ‘kurogo,’ who traditionally dress in black and work invisibly to support the success of a theatrical production.

Whatever the meaning of the pixel grid (and both explanations could be true), the animated greeting card swiftly transforms the black and white dies into festively colored pixels to begin the Christmas animation.

The festive fun begins with two very pixilated-looking youngsters enjoying a snowball fight. An enthusiastically hurled snowball whizzes way past the target and into the stratosphere. Next, we get to enjoy a little 8-bit Breakout gaming magic, as the snowball beeps and bloops, eventually carving a fully formed Christmas tree from green blocks. The tree, complete with full decorations by now, floats down, almost hitting Santa in his sleigh during its descent. Finally, the tree comes to rest alongside some presents and candy canes, all in a vibrant, blocky 8-bit art style.

Even the most advanced chipmaker felt the pull of retro in 2025

One of the themes we have perceived strengthening throughout 2025 is the increasing desire for and interest in retro computing and retro gaming topics. It seems odd that the world’s most advanced chipmaker has chosen this theme, though.

As tech enthusiasts grow tired of difficult-to-find cutting-edge tech being gobbled up to feed unwanted AI overlords, we have seen increasing interest in reviving the ‘old days.’ We note that the likes of Commodore and Atari have been making the most of this wave of interest, with products such as the C64 Ultimate and the Gamestation Go, respectively.

These retro-modern products hark back to the days of computing fun without social media, without ever-stretching system requirements, and to the days when having a 1 MHz CPU, 64KB of RAM, and no GPU at all did not stand in the way of work or play.

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