Four Video Games Set During Christmas!

For all three of you out there that live under a rock (or have somehow escaped the nonstop blasting of Christmas music on the radio) it may come as a surprise that, yes, it's that time of year again. The days are shorter, the nights are colder, and the snow is coming--as long as you live in the right hemisphere (cue those angry Australians). Considering the holiday season, I thought it would be fun to wrap up my blogging for the year with some simple Christmas and New Years related content, and since a prior year’s Christmas List went pretty well, I figured why not just take another swing at it. Instead of anime episodes though, for this year I felt I should list off some Christmas video games since I sort of exhausted all I could say about anime this year with my Zero Frights project.

In my head this blog post seemed like it would be a slam dunk. “It should be super easy to come up with a list fast” I thought to myself, but then … I actually got around to thinking of all the classic examples to use in video games and realized something ... they all suck! Yeah, it's something I never stopped to think about much before but did you ever notice that most Christmas games; are just lazy assortments of Christmas iconography, or even worse some random snow level in a Mario game or something? I mean, sorry guys, but putting a santa hat on Master Chief or adding some snow effects to the city in GTA does not make Halo or GTA a Christmas game. Where are all the games that actually have Christmas in them? Where the games at that take place during Christmas? You see, after pouring through countless BuzzFeed lists to steal ideas, er, no wait, I mean, after countless hours of very academic research, I came to a weird conclusion--Halloween has plenty examples of games that take place during that holiday specifically, but Christmas related games are the exact opposite. Almost none of them are actually on Christmas! Like what the heck Elf Bowling for Wii, step your game up. This is just a sham by this point!

Looking through the sheer large amount of holiday themed games made me come to the realization that while not a perfect track record, Halloween themed games, have a much higher rate of being actually good, where as Christmas games are almost guaranteed to be crap. I can think of a bunch of solid, fun, Halloween holiday games, where maybe I got like, 2 games that are actually good for Christmas. We need better Christmas games! And these games better take place on Christmas! Too long have we gone with these hallow lies.

In order to fix this great tragedy of Christmas fail, I feel like I have to produce a list to end all lists. A list that is so good, it will blow all game developers’ minds and they will have no choice but to make some sweet Christmas game. SET ON CHRISTMAS. I will have to take some drastic measures to accomplish this sadly, so that means I will skip over a lot of beloved classics like Nights into Christmas, but it will all be worth it to spread the word that video games CAN take place on Christmas day! And the ones that do ARE good! So strap yourself in and get ready for some Die Hard-esque Christmas hijinks; here’s four games that actually take place DURING Christmas.

2064: Read Only Memories

Here’s a game that wears its inspirations right on its sleeve. Read Only Memories, or ROM for short, is an indie adventure game made in the bane of classic titles like Snatcher (which coincidentally took place during Christmas too) complete with bright colorful sprites, and an old school UI you would see in a game like Jinguji Saburo on the Famicom.

ROM takes place in the far off future year of 2064, specifically December 20, 2064, and the plot progresses over the course of multiple days, with the final chapter taking place on Christmas Eve, and an epilogue on Christmas day. The story centers on robots called "Relationship and Organizational Managers" or ROMs for short, that are commonplace tools used to do almost anything in the city. There are police roms, there are janitor roms, there are medical roms, and most importantly, the biggest market for roms: a replacement for the personal computer for consumers at home.

The protagonist is contacted by the robot Turing, the first truly sapient ROM who enlists your help to find its kidnapped creator, Hayden. Together the two of you uncover the dark conspiracy behind Turing’s creation, and Parallax, the mega corporation that created all the ROMs--all set during a delightful holiday season.

Parasite Eve


The 90’s was a really weird time for video games, and I totally love how experimental a lot of early 3D titles were on the N64 and Playstation. Parasite Eve is definitely among one of Square soft’s more experimental fares for the Playstation (which is saying a lot since this was the same console where Square gave us Chrono Cross and XenoGears).

This horror, action based, RPG, third person shooter, really is quite hard to put into words, but feels like, in a lot of ways, a precursor to more modern action based menu-driven interface JRPGs such as XenoBlade Chronicles. So what makes this strange, gruesome M-rated experiential game from 1997 a Christmas classic? Well easy. It starts on December 24th! Yup, this whole shindig is one long Die Hard like video game, where the protagonist Aya Brea is wrapped into the crazy battle against Mitochondria powered mutants right smack dab on Christmas Eve night in Manhattan, New York. She’ll have to kick some serious ass if she wants to make it to see the New Year. Now this is more like it!

Hotel Dusk/Last Window

Hotel Dusk Room 215, and its sequel that was too good to come to America, Last Window The Secret of Cape West, are both fantastic adventure game/visual novels released on the Nintendo DS by the small, and sadly now defunct, company Cing. Both games were written by the great Rika Suzuki, a living legend in the Japanese adventure game scene, and represent some of the best the Nintendo DS has to offer in the genre--which I shouldn't have to remind you--was a genre that flourished on the console with excellent title after title releasing on the Nintendo DS such as Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, 999: Nine hours, Nine persons, Nine doors, and my much beloved Jake Hunter Detective Story: Memories of the Past.

Both Hotel Dusk and Last Window have their own plot that don’t tie together per se, but they both star everybody’s favorite wise-ass detective turned washed-up salesman of useless crap, Kyle Hyde, and guess what, they both take place during the holiday season! That’s right, these noir lite little vignette of a game were both set during the end of December, and both games feature Christmas celebrations in them, and let me tell you, Christmas with Kyle Hyde is quite something, and involves a good glass of bourbon. But in all seriousness, what makes both of these games fantastic are the wonderfully fleshed out characters, how they all communicate to each other, and how they are all related to each other in some way once you uncover everyone's back-story. Spending Christmas night with the other vagrants staying in the Hotel Dusk, and in the sequel seeing more of Hyde’s personal life on Christmas, really is some of the best reading. I still can’t not recommend these gems. These Christmas gems now!

Blue Stinger

Speaking of weird experimental 3D games, I think most people forget about the Sega Dreamcast. It's easy to just think of the N64, or Playstation, and maybe even the PC, but most people are often too busy comparing the Dreamcast to the PS2--the console that essentially killed it--which fair enough, but because people so often only think in those terms they can forget that 3D games were still not fully figured out yet, even on the Dreamcast. It's easy to find a lot of stinkers on the console now in 2018; we can all look back in hindsight at Sonic Adventure and have a cheap laugh at the horrendous controls, bad camera and hilarious Clutch Cargo-esque lip syncing quality, but when the 3D games worked on Dreamcast they really worked. This is probably why the console is still so fondly remembered to this day; it goes beyond just simple Sega nostalgia for their console making days. There were tons of strange, excremental games on the console that were trying to figure out what to do with 3D space, and it's Blue Stinger here that was one of the earliest.

Blue Stinger was one of the launch titles for the Dreamcast back in September of 1999, and it was greeted to the world with more or less subpar reviews and general indifference. Over time however, a lot of people have started to really come around on this very strange launch title and some even find it it fun to boot!

So what is Blue Stinger, I see you asking. Well, it's kind of a mess. It's like what would happen if you threw in a little bit of everything that was popular at the time in the blender with reckless abandon. We got survival horror that just became popular, arcade style beat 'em up action game play that you saw in a lot of Sega arcade cabinets of the era, and a sci-fi story that is not unlike what you would expect out of the SciFi Channel complete with aliens and dinosaurs. You can really see the developers were trying pretty much anything they could at this point and not just sticking to typical conventions. No, Blue Stinger didn't want to be in the usual horror theme settings, it wanted to be in a science fiction lab on a tropical island in the year 2018. It didn't want you to conserve your ammo or, to even feel powerless, no, it wanted to double down on the campiness of beat 'em up games with the main character, Eliot Ballade, over here punching alien monster things to death with his goddamn bear hands. Move over Resident Evil, there's a new king in town! 

So what makes this a Christmas game? Well you guessed it! Blue Stinger's plot starts on none other than Christmas Eve 2018. Wait! That's tomorrow! Oh boy, I wonder what kind of day it will truly be.

I hope you all enjoyed this semi-humorous list, and have a wonderful, safe holiday season. It's been a lot of fun this year blogging again on a somewhat consistent basis, and I really hope to keep it up. See you next week for a New Years post!

Seven Christmas Episodes to Wrap Up This Year With

Merry Christmas … er … Eve, everyone. To help celebrate the season and really kick off the end of this year’s blogging I thought what better way than to write about some Christmas related anime episodes. Now of course—as many big anime fans may already know, Christmas in Japan is a bit different from how the West celebrates it, with New Year’s being the bigger, more family oriented holiday and Christmas being a somewhat more intimate holiday for love. Because of that, anime has a lot of great romance related Christmas episodes, but they aren’t all about couples either, so don’t worry. 

Now usually people do “top tens” or “best [blank] of all time” when they make lists, but honestly those are kind of dumb, if I can be so bold. So instead of saying my list is ”the” best, I think I’m just gonna say this is a list of some great episodes, and there's tons more out there as well. Who knows, maybe next year if it goes well I can do another.

So Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Have a great New Year’s, and without further ado, and in no particular order, let’s take a look at—

Seven Great Christmas Episodes!

Toradora! (episodes: 17 - 19)

Toradora! is a J.C. Staff anime from 2008 and in certain circles is considered one of the quintessential romance animes of its decade; and for good reason, as the show is an incredible ride to sit through. The basic premise follows its' cast and their tangled polygonal web of romances. Some end up well, while most seem to always fall apart, but that is true of first love for most people, huh? Ryuji Takasu a good hearted kid who is always mistaken for a delinquent because of his almost yakuza looks and Taiga Aisaka, the biggest bad ass in the school who just so happens to also be pint-sized and not look the part, are the characters at the forefront of the show. Together the two mismatched and misunderstood individuals end up in a bevy of drama, and perhaps the most well known of it all is none other than their Christmas themed story arc.

Honestly, because of that I don’t really want to delve too much into talking about it though, as it no doubt still makes people’s anime Christmas list every year since it aired. What finally accumulates in episode 19: Christmas Eve Party during the school’s … well, Christmas Eve party, is both incredibly touching and incredibly heart wrenching, and the emotions the characters go through will no doubt resonate with younger audiences. 

There’s nothing else more to say, though, other than: if you haven’t seen Toradora! already, get on it. 

Lupin the 3rd Part II/Red Jacket (episode: 64) 

You can’t get anymore classic than Lupin, one of the original animated TV shows meant for an adult audience. The Lupin franchise has had quite a run on Japanese televisions over the last 4 and a half decades with a TV Special (made for TV movie) made every year since 1989, 5 TV shows, 7 movies, and 3 OVAs. It’s pretty easy to say people love this goofy womanizer who also happens to be a world class master thief, and his motley crew. 

And in the second Lupin TV series’ 64th episode: Christmas at Tiffany’s, we finally get to see Lupin and company pull off a heist on Christmas. Being more or less coerced into it by the titular Jewelry Store owner and News-reporter Tiffany, Lupin and crew hafta rob a New York City Jeweler on live television. Can the greatest thief in the world pull off such a heist, or will all the cameras and broadcast finally be what Inspector Zenigata needs to catch him? 

While Christmas at Tiffany’s is more or less an average episode of Lupin at best, that’s still makes it quite a good watch. With a clever trick to beat the cameras, and a good change of pace from the typical Christmas fare, this episode makes for a much needed break from the usual fluff this time of year. Besides when else do we get to see Lupin namedrop Jesus Christ?

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in Pocket (All 6 episodes) 

The original Tonami Promo in 2002 with voice-over narration by Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime. 

Nowadays the Gundam franchise is no stranger to OVAs (Original Video Animation) but back in 1989 this was the first time it dabbled into this medium and simply knocked it out of the park here. I could really write an entire blog entry just on Gundam 0080 alone and still have things to say about it—it’s without a doubt one of the greatest OVAs in the series and also manages to be incredibly easy for new comers to get into; being one of the few Gundams that manages to make the intimidating Universal Century (or UC for short) timeline of the franchise new-comer friendly. Throw-in stellar animation, and fights that will just make your gut churn with dread and excitement at the same time, and you got yourself an absolutely fantastic 3 hours of material to watch.

As for the story, Gundam 0080 takes the focus away from the current frontline battles being fought and instead examines the everyday life of the people living during these times. The story is set near the very end of the One Year War, and thus is during Christmas season, making it almost Die Hard like. Beneath the exterior involves a plot that almost destroys an entire space colony, one of the first real positive looks the franchise has on a Zeon pilot, and an ending that is guaranteed to make anyone—even the coldest of hearts—cry. 

Gundam 0080 should not be missed, and having the voice of Metal Gear Solid’s Snake as one of the main characters in the English dub is just an added bonus.

Himouto! Umaru-chan (episode: 8)

This was not a show I thought I would like as much as I did, but this year’s (2015) Himouto! Umaru-chan really won me over for much the same reason that it seems to have won over everyone else this year; its relaxed, slower pace made it easy-going viewing—almost completely stress-free, and adorable to boot. There’s just something real sincere about this story of an older brother trying to take care of his younger sister who acts like a model student in public but is in actuality a huge pop culture referencing spoiled brat, and in episode 8: Umaru and Christmas and New Year’s sees our dysfunctional family and friends trying to get through the holidays. 

Different from most Christmas themed episodes however, this is a far more realistic and humble look at the holidays, as it involves coming home late from working overtime and just trying to make the best of what is left in the day. It’s a sweet look at a less than fortunate group of people who manage to somehow still make it all work, and is enough make you wanna say “d’aaahhh”.

Super Dimension Fortress: Macross (episodes: 35 - 36) 

The original Super Dimension Fortress Macross from 1982 is a classic mecha love story, that’s just ridiculous enough to work. These last two episodes see the love triangle at the center of the characters’ relationships is finally put to an end as main character Hikaru has to asks himself this holiday season if he really wants to settle for illusions of a past forgotten, or if he wants to try something else. As the finale to the original Macross, these two episodes bring about equal amounts of action and emotions. By this point it becomes increasingly clear that the characters will never have their fairy tale endings, but that’s what makes it so great—the harsh, more realistic representation of broken relationships, and wanting to just go back to how things were again—even as impossible as it is—is something anyone can relate to. This was a great way to end a famous mecha show. 

Magic Kaitou 1412 (episode: 12) 

The Kaitou Kid series started humbly in 1987 before manga-ka (comic writer) Gosho Aoyoma had his first hit with Yaiba the following year, and then became a household name with his mega-franchise Detective Conan/Case Closed in 1994, which more or less took over his life, and probably prevents him from going back to writing more Kaitou Kid stories. Nowadays the Kid is best known for being a regular returning character in Detective Conan, and one of Conan’s greatest rivals—a genius compromise Aoyoma figured out so that he can work on both at the same time. But in 2014, Kaitou was able to somewhat break-free from just being a regular in Conan with his own TV show Magic Kaitou 1412 that sought to adapt (yet again) Kaitou’s standalone stories from his own manga, as well as mixing in some earlier seen cross-over cases from Detective Conan but this time told from Kaitou’s perspective, as a way to raise up the episode count. 

The result is a pretty satisfying show for both old fans of Detective Conan and people who have no familiarity with the series, and in episode 12: Holy Night: Two Kaitou Kids! the show tackles … you guessed it, a Christmas episode. Much again like the Lupin the 3rd episode, this episode is more or less a standard Kaitou caper but told with some added Christmas flare. It’s a cute heist, with some nice Christmas season love between Kaitou and Inspector Nakamori, the man who has been itching to arrest Kaitou this whole time. What’s more not to love? 

Maison Ikkoku (episodes: 39 - 40) 

Maison Ikkoku is another hugely popular series from famous author Rumiko Takahashi (Urusei Yatsura, InuYasha), and while she has tackled many romance series before what sets this apart from a lot of her usual fare is that Maison Ikkoku happens to skewer a little bit older (being a seinen manga). This is a series that resonated a lot with me when I first saw it, and now happens to be one of my favorite romance animes, so I may be a bit bias when I say these two episodes might also be one of my favorite Christmas stories too. 

These episodes follow Godai while he’s still attending University. Christmas is coming around the corner and so he ends up working himself to the bone doing multiple odd jobs in order to obtain presents for everyone, with big plans to surprise Kyoko that evening at their Apartment's get-together. This beginning is pretty typical, but a few lost belongings later, and things really start to get going. Earlier that day Godai tried to have a stone Kyoko owned identified by someone at his University. As it turns out the stone was the first and only present Kyoko got from her now deceased husband (a former geology teacher), and through some bad luck on the train line, Godai loses it. Already bummed out from being reminded of her previous love, Godai now has to deal with such an important item being missing, and ends up wasting almost the entire Christmas eve night trying to search every train he can that goes through the station for it.

As the Christmas hours dwindle away, and the snow keeps piling up on him outside, Godai finds himself exhausted, and through a series of misfortunate happenings all his hard work even blows up in his face when his present for Kyoko ends up missing as well. Eventually Godai finds himself asking what even is the point of any of this anymore, as Kyoko waits more and more at their get-together, worried about him. Although the night eventually improves, it was never the perfect day Godai wanted it to be, and worked so hard for. It’s an endeavor I think almost anyone can really relate to. Maison Ikkoku always had a great mix of melancholic lows and sincerely sweet highs for its awkward couple, and these two episodes really managed to have both all at once.