Santa's Xmas Caper (Commodore 64)

(Actual gameplay starts at about 4:18. The video that I found has a long intro so as to showcase the title-screen music. )

I'm showing my age here, since this game is 30 years old now and playing it is an old Christmas tradition of mine! This is the Commodore 64 version of Zeppelin Games Ltd.'s 1990 release, Santa's Xmas Caper. (I specify which version because it was released on several systems, and some versions are literally a completely different game - for example, the Commodore Amiga incarnation is a platformer, rather than a side-scrolling shooter.)

It's a hideously-difficult game once you complete the first stage, and it's got some elements of misdesign, such as some stages allowing you to travel past background scenery but other stages causing you to lose a life instantly for doing the exact same thing, but it's so fun and cheery that I still own the game and I've kept going back to it for decades, now, and will continue to do so. I've definitely gotten my money's worth out of it, since the cassette-tape originally retailed for only a few pounds!

Does anyone else know this game? Or, failing that, does anyone else have a favourite Christmas-themed title that they keep going back to year after year?

Does this count?



Its not a Christmas title, but it has Christmas in the game!

Animal Crossing (Gamecube) is my absolute favorite game ever, and aaaa hearing the music just gives me chills of nostalgia. ;____; I wish the newest game could've been more like it.  

I've never had a video game that I play around Christmas before (or, at least, a Christmas-themed one), this sounds like such a good idea! If I'm thinking about it now... maybe a marathon involving all the snow-themed world and levels in the Mario games I own. Can't go wrong with the series I love the most!

@Penguin-keeper I've never heard of this game, but it looks like it makes for a fun play-through every year! 

@mimitchi ^o^ My favourite Animal Crossing is also the one on the GameCube! Before I bought my lovely second-hand GC, I used to emulate the original, and it slowly became my preferred title. New Leaf was my first game in the series, and I have lots of good memories with it, but Population: Growing! is where it's at.  Too bad my GameCube's clock battery ran out and needs opening up to even replace it -- at least my old, yellowing Wii has backwards compatibility!

Somewhat off-topic, but I do have a yearly movie-watching tradition: A Charlie Brown Christmas + Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer! Animation/stop-motion and Christmas-themed? Sign me up.

I've been trying to get into a Christmas spirit during December for many years now but I don't feel like I really ever succeeded. First of all I live in a country where it doesn't even snow in December and it's a Muslim country where celebrating Christmas publicly is kind of taboo. Since 2018, shopping malls have been decorated for Christmas but other than that there's nothing to remind you of Christmas and I tend to completely forget that it's December.

I decorate my house (and a growing number of people seem to start doing so as well) and put a Christmassy background on my smartphone. I try to hum Christmas music as much as I can and I put on Christmas music to get into the spirit, but all of these efforts don't seem to pay off a lot.

This year I've decided to try and do even more efforts than usual so I thought maybe I should also start playing Christmassy video games, watch Christmassy movies, and read Christmassy books, which brings me to the reply to the current thread.

For Christmas video games I thought Earthbound Christmas hacks would be very good



I'm a huge Earthbound fan, and I've been wanting to play this for a while, so I only have to decide when I should start playing it and for how long. I think most famous franchises probably have a Christmas hack or two so you could apply this idea to anything you're a big fan of.

To me, Christmas is all about waking up and finding new video games/consoles under the Christmas tree, just like when I was a kid, and my biggest Christmas memory was waking up to find Mario Bros. 3, so I definitely associate Christmas with Mario games and I can totally relate to what you're saying, @Tamacass. (Ultimately I view Christmas as the toys/games/childhood season more than anything else).

As far as movies go, I rarely even watch movies usually, but I've started watching the Charlie Brown special, and it looks cool enough so far (I fell asleep during the first 10 minutes so I wouldn't know). 

And for the reading aspect, I recently downloaded a PDF of a J.R.R. Tolkien book about christmas, titled Letters from Father Christmas. 

Please feel free to suggest anything that you think would help me get into the Christmas mindset. (Other than getting the Santaclautch obviously xD ).

I had a huge Earthbound phase back in 2017! I've been meaning to explore the hacking scene of this game, I'll definitely have to check it out when I can.

Now that I think about it, there is a Christmas-themed video game I have... though it's not like it's an original creation, per say. It came in a pack of a few Super Mario Bros (NES) ROM hacks I downloaded a few years ago: it was dubbed Toadette's Christmas Adventure. I've played through it a few times, mainly when I get extremely bored:



It's a pretty short ROM hack, all things considered, but there's a really sweet and nostalgic charm to it (it's a pretty old hack from what I remember). There's also a companion game to it, in which you play as Toad instead, but I don't have that one on me.

I'll post more if I remember anything else Christmas-themed from the depths of my memory!

Tamacass said:

It's a pretty short ROM hack, all things considered,

Click to expand...

which makes it good in my view because it leaves you the opportunity to beat it and try something else. It's the gaming equivalent of a candy. I'll give it a shot!

mimitchi ^o^ said:

Its not a Christmas title, but it has Christmas in the game!

Click to expand...

Oh, good one! Animal Crossing is pretty much always good!

mimitchi ^o^ said:

I wish the newest game could've been more like it.  

Click to expand...

New Horizons lost me after just a few months, unfortunately - I don't like how they've abandoned built-in features and good game-design in favour of mobile-style timewaster/"engagement" design. I didn't enjoy it in the long run.

Tamacass said:

I've never had a video game that I play around Christmas before (or, at least, a Christmas-themed one), this sounds like such a good idea! If I'm thinking about it now... maybe a marathon involving all the snow-themed world and levels in the Mario games I own. Can't go wrong with the series I love the most!

Click to expand...

That's always a good plan! I've also recently been playing SuperTux, whose first world is very snowy and icy, so it meets this criteria, too.




It's slightly off-topic of me, but this is also something that I enjoy about the modified versions of games that were used at official events in the 1980s and 1990s (such as Star Fox Super Weekend Competition, and Donkey Kong Country Competition Cartridge, and so on) - they're all short-but-sweet, too.

Penguin-keeper said:

I've also recently been playing SuperTux, whose first world is very snowy and icy, so it meets this criteria, too.

Click to expand...

I've just found out that SuperTux has a Christmas Mode that it boots into during December! It changes the title-screen by making the background into a night-time one and putting a Santa hat on the logo, and it changes the hat that Tux wears in-game when he has the Fireflower power-up from a fireman's helmet to a Santa hat.



I think that that's super-charming, and it was completely unexpected, too.