Back again for a very special Sunday round-up of quick-fire reviews and impressions of everything under the spotlight at Retro Arcadia this week, old and new and a bit of both… Well, some of these at least, because in what is now firmly established as an annual tradition, I’ve exclusively been playing some Christmas games, so let’s get festive!

I think we’ll start with Holiday Lemmings 1993 on the Amiga, the first of two full commercial releases that followed the Xmas Lemmings demo given away on the cover of the December 1991 issue of Amiga Format magazine that we looked at here last year. It’s a Christmas-themed take on the massively popular puzzler from DMA Design (better known as Rockstar North nowadays), where, as usual, you’re trying to get dozens of idiot rodents from one end of the level to the other without killing themselves by selecting and assigning special abilities to each one as they go, like block or dig or build or float. Total genius and while you might not be playing all year long (because no one wants to hear Good King Wenceslas on a loop at the best of times, let alone in the middle of July), it’s still a crazy addictive formula whenever you play! As well as jaunty and richly-instrumented takes on various Christmas tunes playing over the top of familiar slapstick sound effects, it’s got all the festive dressing too, with the Lemmings wearing impossibly tiny but still perfectly recognisable Santa outfits, as they trek across frosty landscapes dotted with snowmen, Christmas trees and. Christmas pudding houses, while fairy lights twinkle across the top of the screen. The only real problem is the lack of variety – always the same decorations and with very little to choose between the levels to look at, although there’s plenty to keep your brain otherwise occupied as you tackle increasingly large and fiendishly frantic puzzles. All the same, I think the demo disk was the right place to experience Xmas Lemmings but hopefully we’ll have a go at the 1994 follow-up this time next year because I’m interested to see where else they can take it.

I’d never played any incarnation of James Pond 2: Codename Robocod before now, so I thought I’d give the 1991 Mega Drive version a go this week while I’ve got a reason to! Not that it’s always massively Christmassy, even when you’re in the heart of Santa’s toy factory – more sickly sweet, especially when the liquorice enemies get involved! The tropical vibe chiptune mix of the Robocop theme on the title screen doesn’t do much to set the festive scene either, although the way the high-powered rendition of Jingle Bells emerges out of nowhere in the middle of the otherwise jolly but generic soundtrack more than does the job by itself! The plot does explain things being the way the are though because after the first game, bad guy Dr Maybe escaped to the North Pole where he hijacked Santa’s operation and took his helpers hostage or recruited them for his own evil plans, which seem to involve ruining Christmas for all the poor children, so you need to platform your way through fifty levels across various themed sections, grabbing stolen toys, freeing the hostages and fighting the bad guys, including bosses. You’ve got your “robocod” suit to help out, which extends to wherever the ceiling is above you, allowing you to traverse tricky areas, which the odd vehicle you’ll also come across does even better! Honestly it’s not grabbed me though – too cute, too garish, too repetitive, too floaty. Which I know is the nature of this genre so if that’s for you then the rest is very polished and, I imagine, a generally decent and sometimes seasonal romp!

Alternatively, if you prefer your Christmas games more all-out, then Official Father Christmas Game on the ZX Spectrum from 1989 might be the one for you! Jingle Bells and more on the title screen too – big old medley of all the classics, as only the Spectrum can screech out! And while not exactly a thriller, it’s a really pleasant game too, as first you look around your house for bits of sleigh that I assume the mischievous elves also wandering around have hidden, then you have to remember the six presents on a letter to Santa and try to catch them among all the toys falling from the top of the screen, and then you’re flying left and right delivering presents where indicated over the unique landscapes of all four continents. The bit in your house at the start is nice to look at but a drag, and the falling presents level is very simple, but the four “Defender-style” levels at the end are fun, with you trying to drop all the presents onto a target before the sun rises, looking for gaps between the clouds, and away from birds and planes, all of which will send them off course. No doubt made with kids in mind but a really nicely put together budget title that anyone with a heart will have a nice time playing all the way through.

Before it finally heads back home to eBay, I took Batman: Arkham Origins out of my to-sell box for one more spin as it’s Christmas, with its lovely gothic Christmas scenes to enjoy, and you know what? Without any pressure to complete it this time, it was alright too! This is the Xbox 360 release from 2013 (via backwards compatibility on Series X), which, despite being a huge fan of the series, I was never very fussed about getting at the time, mainly because it seemed like a lazy bit of more of the same… Which it did turn out to be when I eventually picked up a copy for next to nothing a couple of years back, but does give you a new story, set before Arkham City, amidst the anarchy of a Gotham City Christmas Eve, when a still fresh to crime-fighting Batman already has a big price on his head and a load of assassins on his back thanks to the crime lord Black Mask. You’ll also meet old friends like Joker, Penguin, Bane, Killer Croc and Deathstroke on your very enjoyable, free-flowing travels, and the much-lauded combat system, plus detective mode and all the gadgets, feel as good as in the other Arkham games. It’s got all their polish too, with Gotham suiting the season perfectly, and while I’m sure a full-playthrough would still be as disjointed and generally lacklustre as previous attempts, a couple of hours just enjoying the sights and sounds, and messing around with side-stuff I’d previously ignored, was time well spent!

I love a homebrew, and Santa’s Troubles for the Commodore 64 comes from one of my favourite homebrew developers, LC-Games, who have done some fantastic arcade conversions for the system (check out my review of Bagman Strikes Back for one such example) but this is an original of theirs, all the way from 2023! It’s set mere days before Christmas, with all the presents for all the children ready to go in Santa’s workshop, when in come a gang of criminals who grab the lot and set up shop down the road, ready to get them onto the black market. Santa is in hot pursuit though, tracking them down to their North Pole hideout, where you now need to get down the chimney, grab all the presents from each level, and get them back up the chimney while avoiding all the baddies. You start with a magical power that can be used once per level to stun them too but with every two presents you recover, you’ll get another, including stopping time, another stun move, or turning you into an invisible shadow for a few seconds. And you’re going to need every last one because this thing is hard as nails from the outset! It actually plays a lot like Bagman, with you planning well ahead but always ready for a quick change as an enemy suddenly looks like they’re coming your way, as well as things like elevators and stairs for some brief respite, or conversely, being slowed down when you pick up a present, often having to temporarily abandon it to make an escape. It’s (mostly!) fair, the levels are very purposefully designed, and the controls are perfectly responsive, so it’s generally your fault when things go south! It couldn’t look or sound more authentically Commodore 64 either, and just check out that tiny Santa sprite! You can grab this one right here: https://lowcarb.itch.io/santastroubles

This time last year, we looked at the Commodore 64 version of Santa’s Xmas Caper, a brutally difficult horizontally scrolling shoot ‘em up by Zeppelin Games in 1990. Two years later they made a game of the same name but this time it’s a Christmas-themed platformer instead; in fact, apart from the loading screen, the only thing they have in common is that difficulty! Actually, this doesn’t hate you quite as much. It’s just a bit unforgiving! Simple setup though – you’re playing a particularly clumsy Santa, who’s dropped all his presents all over seven festive to the extreme levels, to the point you’ll be jumping across bits of a turkey in one of them… Some of the tastiest-looking Christmas puddings you’ll ever see in a game on that one too! Then there’s giant Christmas crackers to get around, and wintry landscapes, and Dickensian rooftops and so on too, all to another mix of mildly irritating but well constructed Christmas tunes. Once again, you’ve got a typically floaty jump on your side, and with that you need to leap around these levels and retrieve the specified number of presents you’ve lost before moving to the next. You can chuck snowballs to temporarily halt the meanies in your way too, although they’re the least of your worries with all the leaps of faith onto moving platforms you’ll be doing! It’s a lot of fun though, and the levels might be fiendish but exploring every inch to find that last missing present is very rewarding. Really colourful, console-like graphics too, and there can’t be many more appropriate games to close this Christmas Special with!

I do already have a huge waiting list for next year though, so there’s still plenty more where that came from! There’s also plenty more to come in the meantime, although next week we’ll probably all have better things to do, so it’s just a nice relaxed look back at all the games I’ve completed over the course of 2024, for no other reason than I wrote them all down, which is coming on Friday. Then next Sunday, we’ll be back here as usual, and hopefully not a Christmas game in sight this time! Oh yeah, in case you missed it last Wednesday though, do check out my absolute favourite feature of the year, with barely a retro game in sight… It’s The Retro Arcadia Game of the Year 2024 Top Ten Countdown! And with that, I’m going to wish you a very merry Christmas, and hopefully see you next time!

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