Forty-eighth GOTW finished for 2023. Not terribly dissimilar to another Christmas themed game I played (Santa Claus Jr.) in that it is actually better than it has any right to be. If there was a story, I didn't follow it, but there's some decent gameplay here and the sleigh levels were an interesting change of pace. Some terrible hitboxes (especially on the bosses), coupled with some other nonsensical story and gameplay characteristics, keep this from being a surprise gem, but there are certainly worse games to play.

Santa's jokerified and you get to kill Scrupulous Fingore. 11/10 ludopoints!

For a holiday season checklist-ticking release, Daze Before Christmas is rather humble, content with being one of the few enjoyable titles solely dedicated to the season. I'm not sure which was Funcom's first game precisely, this or the seemingly abysmal We're Back! tie-in A Dinosaur's Tale, but it seems like Sunsoft saw something of worth in this one. Going from these dinky platformers to big MMORPGs like The Secret World and Age of Conan—let alone anything as acclaimed as The Longest Journey—must have been wild for this Norwegian startup. It's hardly as if they lacked in other options: most Scandinavian developers stuck to popular PCs like the Amiga during the early-1990s, for good reason. Developing games for cartridge is way more expensive, and riskier due to manufacturers' quality auditing, than putting out mail-order floppy software. So let's give credit where it's due and assume even something like this, which outwardly resembles shovelware, took plenty of effort and tender loving care to create too.

| The presents were mutilated beyond recognition |

With all of the kids' presents missing and a bona fide Gang of Four terrorizing the holiday spirits all over the world, it's now your job to guide Fake Tim Allen through 24 levels of comfortably numbing platformer tropes. Everything's introduced via a cute "T'was the Night Before Christmas"-styled lyric, with each stage laid out via an advent calendar. Honestly, the most memorable parts of Daze Before Christmas are the intro artworks preceding levels, particularly those which look deranged or ominous. Lead artists Ole-Petter Rosenlund had come from the Amiga scene, drawing for works like Psionic Systems' Assassin, so it stands to reason a bit of the 'ol European PC weirdness has snuck into an outwardly unassuming family-friendly game. Baddies and obstacles range from wily rats to industrial machinery, plus all sorts of toys now animated to attack poor Saint Nick. The antagonists themselves look real goofy; I love "Mr. Weather" for how much he resembles Fingore, but also The Timekeeper for looking like a lost Clockwork Knight boss. Shout outs to the floating hearts in the Wood Factory level, you saucy fellas.

Moment-to-moment play in Daze Before Christmas follows a neat formula: hop and skip from A to B, collecting and opening presents to rack up score and lives/health, and occasionally pick up a hot cuppa to transform into Anti-Santa. It's very standard stuff, and I wish your alter ego had meaningful new mechanics beyond temporarily hurting a roadblock enemy, but the controls feel just weighty and responsive enough that I can't complain much. Many level designs feel like the best bits of Earthworm Jim and other Western platformers mimicking the more ambitious Eastern examples, for better or worse. Maybe they could have cut down on the number of pace-killing hazards and auto-scrolling sections; those bumpers and magic carpets got old fast. I think kids would have had a challenge in navigating the ice caves and sewers, but the homes and snowy hills are straightforward to navigate, albeit with a smattering of secret goodies to find off the main path(s). There's also the odd flying stage, where you float your sleigh all over to chuck gifts down chimneys like it's a bombing raid. Lack of variety, repetitive props and sequences, and plenty more déjà vu hold this game way back from greatness, but it's the kind of mediocrity I can understand and let flow right by me.

| Oh what Fun it is to Com |

If I'm making this out to be some flavorless adventure, then you'd be partly correct; this Norwegian oddity has some strange vibes I didn't expect to encounter, though. One stage essentially reworks the Boo House concept as a more setpiece-driven gauntlet of boxing cacti, hurtful ghost rats, and an end boss which requires players to repeatedly stun Louse the Mouse with an Eggman-like spike ball. Another couple runs have Santa dropping into gradually flooding sewers to muck around for elves and their stolen handiwork, with bits of platforming that require actual engagement (comparing well to the factory stages with their many bottomless pits and elevation spikes). Coupled with how little of the game occurs during the day, there's a subtle gothic flair to everything one can experience in Daze Before Christmas, reinforced by a groovy set of rearranged tunes and carols within a smooth FM-synthesis palette.

Summing up a game this brief and frankly shallow feels just a bit difficult when looking at its surprisingly rich presentation. Right away, the options menu gives more control to players than so many of its peers, from audio levels to how long the Anti-Santa morph lasts. Difficulty modes don't vary much in practice; I suppose they affect how frequently a red box gives out bombs and other traps, rather than freeing Santa's helpers or health hats. Then there's the aforementioned soundtrack, which properly conforms to strengths of both the SNES and Mega Drive sound chips, using pleasant instrumentation and sometimes taking unexpected turns (ex. the ripping guitar solo during boss fights!). And for all its missed potential, whether due to inexperience or a short turnover time (which I won't know until the History of Sunsoft Vol. 2 book releases), Daze Before Christmas is certainly a competent romp that anyone can bounce in and out of. Playthrough take around an hour or two at most, password saves are available, and the button layout's totally standard for 1994. The package here is well tested to a fault, other than some momentary collision glitching.

Hope everyone's enjoying their Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Saturnalia, and whatever festivities we seem to obsess over every year at this time. I'll do my part and speak respect for what Funcom did here with Daze Before Christmas, regardless of time, budget, or scope the studio had back then. Its bizzaro Australia-only release on Mega Drive, only expanded to Europe for SNES, meant it had little impact during the 16-to-32-bit transitional period, while later Xmas-themed works like Christmas NiGHTS have rightly shown how much more ambitious game developers can get with holiday theming. Still, I think it's impressive how effortlessly Funcom's title plays compared to many derided Euro-platformers it shares heritage with, to the point that I rarely see any comments making that connection. That's a valuable accomplishment for the period! I'm just sad I can't make a Midsummer pun for this Midplatformer…whoops.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/12/11/daze-before-christmas-review/

Much like there is a lot of Christmas themed media, such as movies, books, music, there was bound to be some Christmas themed video game to try and make bank off of the holiday. And one of those games was Daze before Christmas. And already I have a complaint. Why isn’t is called “The Daze Before Christmas”? Because I just naturally call it that anyway and it just sounds nicer. But I digress, let’s jump into the game.

Our story follows Santa Claus, right as December rolls around, and Louse the Mouse has dastardly plans to prevent Christmas from happening. So Louse the Mouse gets help from his motley crew of creatures, which features Mr. Weather, The TimeKeeper, and the Evil Snowman (amazingly original names, I know), as they execute their plans when Santa is asleep. The Evil Snowman scared the all of the elves away, and The TimeKeeper stole parts from all of Santa’s machines. But that wasn’t enough for Louse the Mouse, as he stole all of the kids presents, and curse them all with a spell. When Santa wakes up, he finds that everything is not right, and has to spend the next 24 days before Christmas making everything right.

The manual puts it a little more eloquently as a rhyming poem.

Bizarrely, the Mega Drive/Genesis version was exclusive to Australia of all countries, and the SNES version had exactly one person porting it over to that console to get it released on time, and that version was exclusive to both Australia and Europe. You would think that something as specific and niche as a Christmas themed platformer would be released in more countries so it could recoup the cost the development of something so specific, but alas, only Australia and Europe were blessed with the release of Daze Before Christmas. From what I hear, America was going to get the SNES version, but the U.S. Division of Sunsoft was shut down before they could release it.

The whole game is pretty short. Sure, there might be 24 levels to represent the 24 days that it takes for Santa to save Christmas, but each is only 2 or 3 minutes at most, and that’s if you don’t screw up, which is rare. Screwing up is kinda difficult to do in this game since the whole game is pretty easy. The boss battles are a little more difficult, since it requires memorizing a pattern unique to easy boss, but those are pretty easy too. The harder difficulties aren’t too hard in terms of difficulty either. That’s probably because it’s aimed at children, so I can’t really complain about the difficulty.

The game comes with all of your standard sidescroller elements from the time. You have a health bar, represented by 5 Santa hats, lives, represented by Santa’s Face, and points, which you can get by picking up Blue Presents, throwing presents into children’s chimneys (I’ll be talking about this specifically later on), and defeating enemies.

There are some power-ups that you can collect too. The Lightning Bolt that let’s you throw fire, which can be used in snow filled levels to help your reindeer escape. However, the most noteworthy powerup is the Tea, which lets you transform into the Anti-Claus. I’ve also seen it referred to as a “potion” in the manual along with it being called a tea, as well as a coffee, so I’ll be using those interchangeably.

Apparently you can destroy all of the presents that Santa created when you’re the Anti-Claus, preventing you from getting more points, and the children from getting their presents. Although I never really used the Anti-Claus that much since regular Santa has a more useful (albeit short) ranged attack.

The camera feels way too zoomed in, and I’ve accidentally jumped on something in the level that hurts you or into a void that straight up kills you and takes a life away, or accidentally getting in the way of an enemies attack or running into an enemy because I couldn’t see where I was jumping or running.

There is a two-player option, although isn’t not all that fun. It’s kind of similar to that of the original Super Mario Bros for the NES. Each player takes over every other level, or if you die. Unless you had no other games at the time, I don’t see anyone playing this mode. And since it’s incredibly easy to find a lot of the classic sidescrollers from the time with a 2-player mode, I imagine it’s very hard to convince anyone that they should play Daze Before Christmas over anything else.

The game comes with infinite continues, making dying a bit pointless. The only thing it effects are the points, resetting it to zero when you lose all of your lives, so unless you’re the type of person who wants to try and get the highest score possible, it shouldn’t matter too much.

There are a few mildly amusing things found throughout the game, such as a present wrapping machine that you go through that wraps Santa in a box and wrapping, and a few of the loading for screens have some nice and funny pixel art. It adds some nice flourish to the game, but it doesn’t really save the rest of the game from being underwhelming.

The music ranges from forgettable and mediocre to actually kinda catchy, but you’re not going to remember it outside of playing the game. Probably the best music is when you play as Anti-Claus. It’s all upbeat and jazzy.

Weirdly enough, every couple of levels are broken up by a section where you have to drop presents that you’ve collected in the last couple of levels into the chimneys of all the good boys and girls, all while having to avoid whatever happens to flying through the air. While it’s not weird that Santa does this, it’s weird that this is not near the end of the game where, you know, it would be Christmas Eve, and an appropriate time for Santa to be doing this. It just make it seem like he’s dropping off presents all through December instead of just on Christmas Eve. It’s a fun section to play, and the developers were probably just using it to break up the levels, but I feel like that’s what the boss levels should be for.

The best part of the game is that some of the sprite work can be quite nice, and the best of it can be seen as the intro screen to each of the levels.

Daze Before Christmas might have some decent ideas and a nice sense of humor, but it can’t escape the fact that it’s just an average sidescroller. Considering how few good Christmas games there are, there’s not much choice for something to play around the holidays, with most games just having a Christmas coat of paint that only appear when it actually gets close Christmas, and that’s if you’re lucky. So if you’re in the mood to play something jolly and festive for the holidays, then you could a lot worse than Daze Before Christmas.

Game #5 of my "seasonal game binge"

Charming lil platformer, reminded me of early 2000s flash games. I admire the balls in just making Santa's superpowered evil form be Satan lol. Story is just there, but the Engrish was so bad I swore it had to be a poorly translated Japanese game only to discover it was western made

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One of the cooler aspects is definitely the presentation. The level screen is done through an advent calendar, and the stage CGs are admittedly damn cool, not to mention songs like Jingle Bells have rather pleasant renditions on the SNES soundchip.

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/894620627099615262/923435376289415268/unknown.png

There's not much to say about the gameplay. Levels can be either super short if the player rushes to the end, or decently long if they look for everything, but there's not really any point to the latter. It's an easy and relaxing game for the most part which can be beaten in like 2 hours tops, albeit sometimes the leaps of faith are kinda bullshit. I do wish it had more difficulty, length, polish, and depth but for a kids game it gets the job done.

Also it has a shmup minigame so it's automatically a good game!

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