I know there aren’t that many, but at least there’s a few. I’m not including games that take place during the calendar year either in real time (like Animal Crossing) or not (like Persona).
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Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams: pretty self-explanatory, it’s also included in the later console ports, although it’s missing the cool presents you could get, including being able to play as himself.
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James Pond 2: Codename: RoboCod: takes place in Santa’s castle and you have to save Christmas.
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Yakuza: surprisingly many of them take place at Christmas.
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Daze Before Christmas: a platformer for the Mega Drive and SNES that’s not particularly good.
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Xmas Lemmings: basically demos of Lemmings with Christmas-themed levels, there were a bunch of these for PC and Amiga.
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Tyrian: Originally a DOS shmup that was released as freeware and now has open source ports, there’s a Christmas mode that activates if the system clock is set to December. I’m pretty sure there were other DOS games with Christmas modes too.
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Duke: Nuclear Winter: a Christmas-themed expansion for Duke Nukem 3D.
RayForce is about as much of a Christmas game as Die Hard is a Christmas movie, but the true ending to RayCrisis reveals that Operation RAYFORCE saw the X-Lay launch on Dec. 24 MC 0185.
I wasn’t expecting to see someone mention the Ray series* today, let alone in this thread. I’ll count them as honorary Christmas games because I love them (I’m definitely never seeing the true ending of RayCrisis).
*Technically, the name for the series might be Ray’Z, because that’s what the title of the recent collection used, but I think it looks stupid. You could say I’m not a Ray’Zist
-kingdom hearts 2, nightmare before Christmas level
-spiderman Miles Morales
-undertale, Snowdin area
-saints row 4, Christmas dlc
-banjo kazooie, freezeezy peak (Christmasy vibes)
kingdom hearts 2, nightmare before Christmas level
There’s also Oogies Revenge for the PS2 lol
spiderman Miles Morales
I totally forgot about this one lol. Peter is out of town for the holidays explicitly
Lifeline: unique PS2 game that you use a microphone and voice commands as your controls. You give voice commands and control a waitress aboard a rich space hotel that’s taken over by aliens during Christmas time and have to survive. Also Mansplaining: The Game.
Blue Stinger: kino
Raw Danger and I think some of the Disaster Report games takes place during Christmas. Absolute cinema choose your adventure. A natural disaster befalls you and you must survive. Some of the choices you can make are absolutely psychopathic and funny lmao.
Parasite Eve is either a Christmas game or a New Years Eve game
PS2 and Dreamcast had amazing B-tier movie-like games that are Christmas games.
The Koopa Who Stole Christmas SM64DS ROMhack.
The classic Hideo Kojima adventure game, Snatcher, is set during Christmas if I remember right
I had no idea that was set during Christmas.
I also forgot that Batman: Arkham Origins was a Christmas game, and Jazz Jackrabbit 1 & 2: Holiday Hare, even though I had a list of games and that was on there.
It’s mostly inconsequential to the plot, but there’s a part involving a Santa Claus and a version of Jingle Bells that plays.
I never played Origins, but I remember one of the Batman Arkham games being Christmasy. Was there another that had a snowy environment?
Arkham City has a winter setting, just not Christmas-related.
Doesn’t it also have a Batman/Joker Pieta-ish image somewhere towards the end? I can see where that all blurs together as “Christmas” in my half-remembered memories.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Blue Stinger for the sega dreamcast is as far as I’m aware the goat of Christmas games. Just look it up on youtube and bask in the weirdness.
I remember watching Yahtzee Crawshaw(zero punctuation guy) and friend(he once ate a spoonful of Gatorade powder) play that way back when. It’s a weird game
Obligatory: Die Hard had a tie in game
TYRIAN MENTIONED!
Batman Arkham Origin DKC3 there’s a cheat to make every bonus level christmas themed with a very nice alternate music Bully theres a christmas section or christmas DLC and the music is also banging