Retro Christmas Offerings

Christmas is obviously the most important time of year as it’s the time when I get the most presents (double the amount of birthday and five times the amount at easter!) The games industry obviously knows this because 75% of the games released in the year come out just before Christmas, hence last week alone saw the release of Modern Duties: Will Smith Ops,  Medal of Duties: Taliban Ops, Golden Sun 3: Djinn Ops and many other ops related games. However the games industry seems reluctant to make any games that feature Christmas, more than likely because of political correctness gone mad. Anyway here is a list of the top 5 games (only 5 games) which feature Christmas in some capacity. Just remember that having snow in a game doesn’t make it Christmassy because all games have snow levels – even Rayman: Raving Rabbis


Shenmue – If you play the game up to December then Christmas lights will spring up in Dobuita town centre. You may even spot Santy Claus forcing himself between toy capsule machines or getting into fist fights with the burger bear. Just like in real life the Shenmue December the 25th is extremely disappointing, no one gives you any presents AND if you have the job at the docks you still have to turn up for work. In many ways Ryo is like the boy that Santa Clause forgot, he never got any presents and his daddy had been killed by a man in a dress.

Christmas rating – Plasma Sword 2: Blitzens Revenge

Christmas Bonus - Shenmue sailor discussion
“Sailor location known?”
“Sailor location denied!”
“Identify Sailor?”
“Negative!”


Sonic Adventure – Yet again Dreamcast era Sega showed us the true meaning of Christmas by giving us presents, presents in the form of free DLC. If only they had invented ‘Sega points’ and charged 10.50 for downloadable Christmas outfits they probably wouldn’t have gone bankrupt. Essentially Sega is George Bailey only instead of trying to commit suicide they keep inventing new friends for Sonic. Eventually they will realise that no amount of Blaze the cat can destroy the simple joys of a pine tree mysteriously playing the NightS theme and whenever Sonic collects a ring in a game that doesn’t feature werehogs or Arthurian legend an Angel gets its wings. (Or at least a Chao)

Christmas Rating  - Heavy Rain(Deer)

Christmas Bonus – New ideas for Sonic friends
Prentox the Vulture, Logarithm the studious porcupine and Uriko the Half Beast.



Christmas NightS into Dreams – A game so Christmassy that it even has Christmas in the title. Also it plays a Christmas medley while you play it, everything is made of candy canes and presents and all the unlockables are called “Christmas presents”. This would be the perfect Christmas game if only NightS: Journey into Dreams hadn’t changed our perception of the main character from a mute dream sprite to a transsexual jester.

Christmas Rating – 9 Lords a Leaping Lizards Mario adventure book.
Christmas Bonus – A fond reminiscence of NightS pinball on Sonic Adventure.


Dance Dance Revolution: Euro Mix – Does one Christmas song qualify a game as Christmassy? The real question is how many Christmas songs does Rock Band have? I don’t know as I have never played it but what I do know is that someone should start a Facebook campaign to get Silent Hill to Christmas number one.

Christmas Rating – Let it project Snowblind
Christmas Bonus – A Christmas joke
                        Q. What did you get for Christmas?
                        A. Presents!


The Sims 2 – You can potentially force your electronic slaves to have Christmas every day as there is no calendar in the Sims or if there is it is in Simlish so instead of Christmas it would be called “Melcranks”. EA went so far as to release a special Christmas edition of the Sims but so far as I could tell it was just the bog standard Sims with a houseplant reskinned as a Christmas tree. Still “Beggars can’t be juicsters” and its always fun to see a family dressed a teddy bears give each other presents while the youngest cries for help in a room with no doors or windows.

Christmas Rating – Merry Christmas (Warcraft is over)
Christmas Bonus - Q.What is John Simm's favourite game? A. SimmPsons road rage.
                            


 The moral of the story is that more games should feature Christmas either in the form of DLC for Trauma Centre where you have to do a c-section in a stable or a game based on the Santa Clause 3 where you can press a button to make Jack Frost keep saying “I INVENTED CHILL!”