STACK #158 Dec 2017

TECH FEATURE

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Christmas Plays

adventure title – traces the story of a young martial arts expert on a mission to track down the killer of his father. At the time, Shenmue was the most expensive game ever produced, coming in at $47 million. So how does the Christmas theme fit in here? Well, the game begins in late November, and as players make their way through the town of Dobuita, snow starts to fall, Christmas decorations appear, the music becomes more festive-skewed, and even Santa himself makes an appearance – Christmas in Shenmue is adroitly executed. Christmas Lemmings (1991) Lemmings : a simple yet brilliant concept, and the Candy Crush of its day; everybody played it, and everybody was addicted to it. To support the release of Lemmings , Scottish studio DMA Design, who would later become known as Rockstar North and the producers of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, produced a four level demo called Christmas Lemmings . Essentially a re- skinned Christmas-themed Lemmings with snow effects throughout the levels, and Lemmings sporting Santa suits, the demo proved so popular that it returned over the next two years. In 1994, DMA jumped on the commercial viability of the game and launched a full retail copy. Christmas Nights Into Dreams (1996) Basically a two-stage extended demo of the excellent Nights Into Dreams with a real neat feature: if you play the game in December, the Dreamcast’s internal clock will switch it into Christmas mode. From here, the game’s soundtrack becomes Jingle Bells ; the two protagonists, Elliot and Clarios, sport Santa suits; and if you play through on Christmas Day, you’ll notice Santa and his reindeers cruising by in the background. Christmas Nights Into Dreams is the essential festive game for the holiday season.

The silly season is almost upon us. What better way to spend your time at home patiently awaiting the fat, red-suited, bearded burglar to call than playing a video game with a Christmas theme.

Christmas crime, armed with a secret weapon – a coffee that turns ol’ St. Nicholas into his alter ego, the Anti-Claus. A platformer based loosely on Super Mario Bros. , Daze Before Christmas came out on Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo. It rated rather well, too! Elf Bowling (1998) Christmas is booming and Santa Claus is struggling to keep up with all the present orders. Consequently he pushes his elves to work even harder, but they’ve had enough and they go on strike. Santa’s response? He puts them on strike – literally. Yes, this PC flash game – as the title suggests – is a bowling game with

Snatchers (1988) Released in 1988 in Japan for the MSX 2 computer, Snatchers was the second game written and directed by a young Hideo Kojima. 50 years after a biological weapon destroyed most of the world’s population, a new threat has emerged – a mysterious force of robot body snatchers. Fear not: amnesiac Gillian Seed is on hand to save the day. But what’s this got to do with Christmas, we hear you cry? Well, the game is set during the festive season. Six years after its release, this quality little cyberpunk adventure was exclusively ported to the Sega CD. Daze Before

Christmas (1994) While Santa Claus was sleeping, the nefarious Snowman and the devilish Timekeeper have snuck into the North Pole and nicked all the Christmas presents,

Santa sending down the balls at the elves who are acting as pins. The fun little title went on to inspire a truly awful port to the Nintendo DS and a suitably dire CGI movie. Shenmue (1999) A simply unmissable game on the Sega Dreamcast, the brilliant Shenmue – an RPG

enslaved the reindeers, and captured all the elves. However, Santa isn’t having any of that. Upon waking, he launches into recovery mode and hunts down the perpetrators of this evil

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DECEMBER 2017

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