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.
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.