For the past few years, I’ve been devoting my Weekly Spotlight feature closest to Christmas entirely to festive games. However, there’s only so many of them, and there’s certainly only so many of them I have any desire to put myself through, so this year I thought I’d do something a bit different and count down my favourites instead. And here we are! Like the time I got into my top ten Christmas movies when I covered Die Hard Trilogy in more detail here than it may or may not get later, I’m going to play pretty fast and loose when it comes to defining what makes the cut, but effectively, it’s games with a persistent Christmas vibe, as opposed to a themed level, for example, like that dreadful Muppets racing game on the original PlayStation, or games like Metal Gear 2 that allude to a Christmas setting in storyline but that’s about it… As you might have already noticed in the picture at the top of the page though, I do plan to cover a couple more of those at the end because they’re great all the same! Intriguingly, as I write, unlike most of these countdowns I put together, I’m still not really sure where this one is going to end up, and like those seasonal Weekly Spotlights I mentioned earlier, I’m now wondering why I’m putting myself through this, so before I talk myself out of it, let’s get into the games!

10. Gremlins: The Adventure (Commodore 64)

I was hoping to get a bit further down the list before I had to start justifying including something but what the hell, Gremlins is a Christmas movie, with its seasonal setting intrinsic to the narrative, while the overall atmosphere is full of festive cheer, so here we are… And I love it when I get to include an old text adventure in any countdown! This one is from Adventure International in 1985, is based on Joe Dante’s cult classic from the previous year, and has you in the the shoes of Billy Peltzer, clearly sometime after midnight, because it looks like Gizmo has just been fed and Kingston Falls is under siege by Gremlins! It’s pretty big for one of these, with around fifty locations full of constant danger and some pretty off-the-wall puzzles. The text parser needs almost as much lateral thinking as those do too, but the vocabulary is decent and is always worth experimenting with, even if you can’t mess around too much because the Gremlins are closing in with every move, offering a level of tension you don’t often get with these. It’s also one of those new-fangled graphical text adventures, and while graphics that set the scene are often a bit more ZX Spectrum in their colour choices than C64, they are gloriously of their time, and who can deny that walking into that living room isn’t just like coming downstairs on Christmas morning like you remember???

9. Christmas NIGHTS Into Dreams (Sega Saturn)

It might not be much of a game but for festive spectacle alone, I can’t not include Christmas NIGHTS Into Dreams in this countdown, especially when what gameplay is there is this much fun too! It’s actually from a very cool old Sega Saturn demo disk from 1996, and is based on regular NIGHTS Into Dreams from earlier that year by Sega’s Team Sonic, coming across as a kind of 3D Sonic prototype meets Super Mario 64! This version of the game is effectively one complete level from the original, including its boss, and while it’s obviously dressed for Christmas here, that’s only the case if you enter a date in December when it asks for one at the start, otherwise you get the regular game stage demo… I said it was cool! I also said there’s not a lot to the gameplay though – collect festive tokens to light candles on a Christmas cake to rescue the Christmas Star or some such nonsense, and despite some 3D textures that you’re better off not getting too close to nowadays, this is a blast, very addictive and a real audio and visual Christmas feast! Loads of presents to unlock too, from soundtracks to mini-games where you play as Sonic himself, and they’re all unlockable through extended rather than expert gameplay, and that’s certainly no chore!

8. Dracula Unleashed (Sega Mega-CD)

“Decapitation is a most ‘orrible crime…” I know I’m going totally off-piste this time with Dracula Unleashed for the Mega-CD or Sega-CD, a 1993 interactive gothic horror movie and pioneer of using full-motion video as a key gameplay element, much like my old favourite Night Trap, or the even more wonderful Sewer Shark. Actually, I’ll let you in on a secret – I just linked to a previous deep-dive on the latter, but the other two will also be my Halloween and Christmas specials (like the one you’re reading now) for 2026! Anyway, it’s set ten years after the events of Bram Stoker’s novel, with rich Texan Alexander Morris in London, trying to uncover what happened to his absent brother Quincey (from the book), while on the other side of Europe, Dracula is being brought back to life in a strange ceremony, and by using a spooky amulet is then going to be able to take any human form. You need to unmask him and kill him (again) before your time runs out, using a familiar point-and-click adventure interface to find and piece together various clues while watching what must have been very impressive (and big budget) video for the time, which might struggle to impress today but the laughably bad acting is timeless! And all the low-res live action is stitched around a full-on Victorian Christmas, so if that’s good enough for Gremlins and Die Hard, then it’s good enough for me!

7. Special Delivery (Commodore 64)

Back to an undisputed Christmas game now, which I also think might well have also been the very first game I ever played on a Commodore 64! It’s about as budget game on C64 from 1984 as you could imagine too, as you gad about on Santa’s sleigh, dodging lightning while catching presents from angels in the clouds, no less! Collect enough of them and you can then land on the roof of one of the houses below, triggering the second stage, which has you climbing down one of three ladders in the biggest chimney you’ve ever seen on a suburban semi-detached property, dodging unspecified baddies on the way to the fireplace, and out into the final stage! This has you creeping and climbing your way around a crude but perfectly habitable 2D-and-a-bit house to deliver the presents under the Christmas tree while avoiding its inhabitants. Then you loop and start again! The graphics are blocky and the sounds are grating, but if you wanted to play as Santa in 1984 then you couldn’t ask for any more than this! As Prince would go on to say just a few months later, “they say the first time ain’t the greatest but I tell you, if I had the chance to do it all again, I wouldn’t change a stroke…”

6. Maria’s Christmas Box (Amiga)

Speaking of stroke… Ahem, sorry, but it’s definitely time for some Christmas sleaze! Some time ago now, I put together a deep-dive on Maria’s Christmas Box on the ZX Spectrum, and to this day I don’t know why I put it out in September, but regardless, during a whistle-stop tour of various other versions also available towards the end of the feature, I got quite taken by the Amiga one! They all appeared in time for Christmas 1988, with the titular (er…) Maria being glamour model Maria Whittaker, who video game nerds will know best for her role in superb one-on-one weapons-based fighter Barbarian and its sequel, which arrived not long before this. Back to my deep-dive and its findings, long story short, it turned out there was a pretty decent game of poker behind some downright bizarre graphics on the Spectrum and the other 8-bit systems, but adding mouse control and a bit more pace then made all the difference again when it came to the 16-bit incarnations… But yeah, I really can’t deny those far higher quality (very relatively speaking!) nudie digitisations of my favourite eighties Page 3 girl didn’t do any harm either! You’ve now got an easy mode and a hard mode too (and I’m strictly talking poker skill level), and there’s some nice sound effects, and everything is just laid out a bit nicer, making for a really nice game of Christmas cards, just maybe not for all the family!

5. Die Hard Trilogy (PlayStation)

Die Hard is a Christmas movie, fact, even if it’s not the greatest – that’s First Blood! If only Taito’s Rambo III covered all three movies like Die Hard Trilogy does, or PS3 Rambo wasn’t quite so terrible… Despite the astounding technological leaps the PS1 continued to ram down our throats throughout 1996, I can’t think of many things to ever appear on the platform that were more ambitious than this! It’s split into three very distinct stages, each of which reflects one of the first three Die Hard movies – if only I could rephrase that as “all three Die Hard movies…” Anyway, the first stage is a third-person shooter set in the Nakatomi Plaza skyscraper, seen from behind and a little way above in a more or less 3D fashion. Definitely looks of its time but plays well and sounds great! The second a fast-paced on-rails light gun shooter, taking place all over an airport, and I reckon is up there with Time Crisis, House of the Dead and so on as a fine example of the genre, if on the more brutal side of it, but the blood spraying all over some of gaming’s finest Christmas trees and an excellent soundtrack make it worth the effort. Finally, we’ve got a chaotic driving game involving chasing down bombs across New York City. It’s a bit Chase HQ with the (very) fast and loose driving mechanics of an old GTA, and really captures the energy of the third film, if not Christmas particularly, as you would expect. Two out of three ain’t bad though, and they’re all probably worth the price of entry in their own right. If you’re interested, this also got the deep-dive treatment here.

4. Moley Christmas (ZX Spectrum)

There was no entry price at all for our next game though, which was given away on a free cover tape with Your Sinclair magazine just before Christmas 1987, and has also had my deep-dive treatment right here! Don’t let the whole promotional giveaway thing fool you though, this was a proper Monty Mole game (albeit much shorter than his commercial outings), not only showcasing the series’ slightly bonkers trademark old-school-cruel platforming but also the flair we’d grown accustomed to from Gremlin Graphics by then too, with vibrant visuals like only the Spectrum could do (but also see Gremlins on the C64 above!), all moving super-smoothly, and with a not overly irritating version of Jingle Bells on top! Controls great too – which is mandatory with these things or they’re crap by default – as you guide Monty through six self-contained (and surprisingly varied) screens to make sure the Your Sinclair cover game gets to the printers in time for Christmas. The level design in the more traditional platforming-type areas is typically near-enough perfect, then there’s a bit of puzzling, something like Frogger, and even a screen that bizarrely feels like Super Sprint even though it’s nothing like it! And did I mention it was free??? Seriously, I know you think Batty was your favourite cover tape but play it again and it really wasn’t – this is the real deal, and all the Christmas game you could ever want… At least until you can finish it in less than ten minutes!

3. Batman Returns (Sega Mega-CD)

We’re back on the Sega-CD or Mega-CD or whatever you want to call it now with Batman Returns, all the way from 1993! Before I get into it though, I want to quickly mention the game of the same name on the SNES, where it was an impressive side-scrolling beat ‘em up that really captured the spirit of the movie they’re both based on, with big, detailed sprites, fluid combat mechanics and some awesome music… But try as I might, it’s never really grabbed me, so that’s why it’s not here! What is here, though, is an enhanced version of the Mega Drive or Genesis platformer based on Tim Burton’s super-gothic, superhero, sort of Christmas movie from 1992, and I’m not just talking the usual enhanced sound you’d normally get in a conversion like this either… It’s got a whole new set of 3D driving levels too, and what’s more, if alternating between them and the undeniably less exhilarating jumping and climbing levels from the original isn’t for you, then you can just switch them off and play the driving game to your heart’s content against an absolutely stunning Gotham backdrop, all dressed up for Christmas. In a Batmobile! The last couple of stages switch to your Bat-boat too but you’ll be lucky to see them – the time limit a few levels into this very stylish take on something like RoadBlasters is rough! Fantastic soundtrack tops off an essential Batman experience all the same though, and a pretty nicely Christmas-themed one too!

2. Deathsmiles II: Makai No Merry Christmas (Arcade)

I’ve written about this several times previously (including in yet another deep-dive here), albeit never as my second-favourite Christmas game before… Okay, like every other example of the shoot ‘em up genre, in whatever direction it’s coming at you, this sequel is obviously no Deathsmiles, and the gothic exuberance of the incredible original is lost a bit in the move to bonkers festive polygons, but it’s still a 2009 bullet-hell from Cave, and that makes it pretty fantastic in all other respects! The evil Satan Claws has killed your beloved adopted father of sorts, Count Dior, on Christmas Eve, so you’ve got to chase him down through Gilverado’s winter wonderland, which adds new locations to its Halloween-themed predecessor’s, and there’s two saucy new “Angels” to play as too. Some very dubious cultural nuances aside, it plays just great, with some massive and totally insane bosses and a challenging but beatable difficulty curve, with some deep scoring mechanics and level progression to keep you coming back. Christmas turned up to eleven too, at least for the first few stages, after which it occasionally goes a bit too oddball (not to mention polygonal) for its own good, but from its beautifully decorated and luxuriously lit streets to that terrifying giant reindeer, it’s almost as good as it gets…

1. Snatcher (Sega Mega-CD)

Up to just a few weeks before this countdown was published, I’d have never seen this one coming! That said, Konami’s Snatcher is hardly new to me, but messing around with the Japanese version on the PC-Engine Mini a few years back using my phone camera for live translation was never going to land it in the top spot here! Which is why I’ve been meaning to play what I guess is the definitive Western release from 1994 on the Sega Mega-CD ever since, and I finally did, and as you can see, it was totally worth the wait! This is, of course, Hideo Kojima’s cult graphic adventure set in the Blade Runner-inspired surrounds of Neo Kobe City, a neon-drenched dystopia where you play an amnesiac agent investigating a series of murders committed by vampire-like humanoid robots called Snatchers. I know point-and-click adventures evolved from the old text adventures, but this has a vibe somewhere right in the middle, with these gorgeously atmospheric, minimally animated pixel-art scenes, supplemented by comic-book style character presentation mixing text and voice-acting to convey the wonderfully cinematic interactive narrative. This is driven by very intuitive and surprisingly adaptive menu-based commands, as well as the occasional first-person shootout, which is a simple but effective distraction. It’s all about the storytelling though, which is immersive,  fast-paced, hard to put down, and I reckon is about as sophisticated (and coherent) as Kojima has ever got, although his other, er, quirks are all present and correct! Just like the sumptuous, almost Castlevania-like soundtrack… Sparkling renditions of Jingle Bells aside! That’s just part of its festive spirit though, with persistent Christmas themes woven into not only various locations but the storyline itself, and that’s before you start digging through the full repertoire of menu options, where you always find Kojima’s best social insights! That this version even exists is curious, given the ongoing demise of the platform by the time it arrived (which wasn’t exactly widespread to begin with), but retrospectively has proven to be welcome all the same, not only coming fully translated for the first (and only) time, but the final act is more fleshed-out than previously too, and although there is a bit of censorship and some graphical downgrades compared to the later (Japanese-only) PlayStation and Saturn ports, I’m sure support for Konami’s “Justifier” gun controller more than makes up for it! And I might have come to it decades late but this game had me hooked from start to finish, and I loved the sights, the sounds, the way it plays and everywhere it takes you, making it not only yet another case of very glad I finally got there, but a perfectly timed surprise entrant here too!

Not sure the Mega-CD (or Sega-CD if you wish) has ever featured so prominently in any multi-system top ten before! Will take some time to get used to saying Snatcher and not Deathsmiles II is my favourite Christmas game too! Its late entry did also kick out the Amiga version of Santa’s Xmas Caper, so quick shoutout to that, in case cute Christmas-themed platformers are more your thing. Speaking of which, the SNES version of Daze Before Christmas wasn’t far off being included either – it’s hardly groundbreaking but is a really pleasant time and couldn’t be more Christmassy, which strangely might have counted against it being included, given I got a copy on an Evercade collection last Christmas but it took me until February to finish it! A couple more honourable mentions… Twisted Metal on the original PlayStation really should be in this list because its gritty vehicular combat is actually set on Christmas Eve, but it just doesn’t have that Christmas vibe I was looking for here (as subjective as it apparently turned out to be), so despite a few Christmas trees and scary Santa decorations on shops (as pictured above) on one of the stages, I just couldn’t really talk myself into including it, however much I really wanted to! And finally, as alluded to at the start, World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, pictured at the top of the page here, has the most Christmassy level ever hidden away in one of its main levels (if you happen to be playing two-player), but that’s it, so great game, just not a Christmas game…

Before we go, I’ve got a confession to make. Puzzle Bobble 2X, pictured here looking as festive as it gets on the Taito Egret II Mini, was at number three in my countdown until about fifteen minutes ago as I write! The thing is, not unlike Mickey Mouse just now, this 1995 Bubble Bobble spin-off sequel (known as Bust-a-Move 2X in Europe and America) that has you matching coloured bubbles and is as addictive as it gets, isn’t even vaguely Christmas-related until you start sniffing around DIP-switch settings, where there’s both Christmas-themed and New Year-themed attract modes… Originally I just went with it, but if I’m not allowing Twisted Metal then I can’t allow this, even if it is the third best Christmas game ever! Does give me an excuse to leave you with a nice Christmas greeting though, so with that, I hope you’ve enjoyed my little countdown, and unless you’re reading this in the middle of July or something, have a wonderful Christmas time!

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