Daze Before Christmas (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
163A playthrough of Sunsoft's 1994 Christmas-themed platformer for the Super Nintendo, Daze Before Christmas.
Played through on the normal difficulty level.
Daze Before Christmas was initially a Sega Mega Drive game that received an Australia-exclusive release. Not too many games about like that, for sure. Later that year, however, it was ported to the SNES and was released in both Europe and Australia. Its planned US released was cancelled, leaving it a PAL-only title for both the MD and the SNES.
Ostensibly made for small kids, Daze Before Christmas puts you in charge of Santa Claus (or Father Christmas if you prefer), who is the victim of a recent, magically-charged case of home invasion. His elves have all vanished, as have all of the gifts he has ready for the worlds children. Oh noes!
The game takes place over 24 different stages that generally involve running about and jumping on and flinging blue magic sparkles at vaguely menacing things roaming back and forth. My favorite bit is when you pick up a mug, though: drinking from it allows Santa to become "Anti-Claus," a hilariously unexpected evil doppleganger that beats things to death with his sack for a limited period of time.
The remaining stages have you guiding your sleigh over cities, delivering presents to all the good boys and girls patiently waiting for morning. These spots feel strangely like shmup stages, just without any shmupping.
The game is super easy, which makes it ideal for the kids it had in mind when it was released. I doubt it's easy or cheap to track an original print of the cartridge, but if you have primary school-age kids in the house, they're likely to have a blast with it.
The use of color is pretty striking in a lot of the stages, and though some of the levels are far better looking than others, the graphics are really nice to look at overall. There are some really neat little touches with the animation, like how Santa hides himself under his hat when he ducks, or how he thrashes to escape a gift-box he gets caught up in. The only thing I can take any issue to here is that sometimes the screen feels a bit too closely zoomed in on the action - there are quite a few blind jumps - but they usually don't pose too much of a problem.
The music is pretty nice, and somewhat better than I expected it to be from a Christmas game. It does have a few holiday favorites, but thankfully the developers restrained themselves from shoveling 15 different remixes of Jingle Bells at us. The holiday classics do sound good in their renditions here, and the original music fits it all quite nicely.
If you're looking for a cutesy, fun, well-made Christmas-themed game and would rather avoid abortions like Elf Bowling 1&2 on the GBA, this will do nicely. It's a solid, fun, likable game that doesn't last very long, but should get you through the holiday season with a smile on you and your kids' faces.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
Visit for the latest updates!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/NintendoComplete/540091756006560
https://twitter.com/nes_complete