Developed/Published by: Al Iapicca, Bob Johnston / Energy Games
Released: 1981
Completed: 05/12/2021
Completion: I played it. We’ll go as far as that.
Trophies / Achievements: n/a
It’s the holiday season, and I was struck recently that I never make a point of playing any Christmassy games during the period. I mean I don’t even get Christmas Nights out! Shocking really. Considering I’m going through my backlog chronologically, I thought I’d see what the earliest Christmas games were, and I’m surprised to find that this, a little-known Apple II game that, like, came in a ziploc bag in 1981 is the first Christmas game ever–unless you particularly want to count a type-in memory game from Softside Magazine that just happened to use Christmas words. Well, unless Mobygames is wrong, which I guess it could be.
Anyway, this is a very strange little shooter where you control an absolutely massive Santa flying behind a huge blue Rudolph (I assume all the other reindeer are to his right depth-wise in a row). You move right to left (odd) must shoot… Pac-men? And… stars? While trying to drop presents into the chimneys below that you can (surprisingly) control the direction of a bit. All of which you do at about one frame a second, if that.
It’s, obviously, not very good, and it doesn’t particularly make you feel Christmassy outside of a beepy version of Jingle Bells right at the start (it’s silent the rest of the time.) It seems like the programmers (Al Iapicca and/or Bob Johnston of Marin Data Systems, according to the title screen) couldn’t work out how to make Santa only move up and down when you held the direction, so as soon as you hit A or Z he just… goes in that direction until you push the opposite one1. It’s also clear–unless the game has the slowest ramp-up of difficulty ever–that they couldn’t manage to get more than one enemy on screen at a time with all the chimneys moving too, so there’s points where you’re just like… should I go off and make a cup of tea and come back?
Not that having more enemies on screen would be a good idea–Santa is so bloody massive and slow [“oi!”–Santa] that it’s hard to really do anything. It’s not exactly, hard–if you’re dedicated you can slowly line up your shots and avoid the birds that you can’t kill, all while dropping presents–but it’s really, really hard to want to.
That all said… I have this weird suspicion that this was inspired by Defender (which came out in early 1981) of all things. Sure, you can’t turn around, but there’s a Defendery-ness to the stars, Rudolph shoots a similar laser and dropping presents feels inspired by the rescues in Defender, so maybe they thought “you know what would make Defender better? A MASSIVE SANTA.”
It doesn’t, but you know what? It was 1981. They weren’t to know where games would go. Here’s to the dreamers.
Festive vibes ranking: You’re constantly staring at a huge Santa. HIGH
Will I ever play it again? I barely played it the first time.
Final Thought: Thinking about this in the context of 1981, the Apple II had had an extremely impressive year, with seminal RPGs Ultima and Wizardry coming out, and system defining titles including Swashbuckler and Castle Wolfenstein also being released. With inflation considered, it’s wild to imagine how anyone afforded the “affordable” Apple II (the price translates to about five grand now!) but let’s assume you lived in one of those mansions from a John Hughes movies in the 80s and you excitedly ran downstairs on Christmas morning–you could just about accept that your granny bought you Santa’s Sleigh Ride by asking a clerk in a “mom-and-pop” computer store (if this managed any form of actual distribution at all) but you’d be hoping your parents picked up one or two of the other titles I’ve mentioned so you weren’t bored ten minutes later and have to *shudder* go and play outside.
- This is apparently an issue with input on the Apple II, though it’s hardly ideal. ↩︎
