Since their inception video games have made a perfect Christmas gifts. We all can remember waking up on Christmas morning and excitedly opening up the hottest new game of the season or the newest console only to spend our Christmas day playing them all day long. But what about games that are about or set on Christmas? There are surprisingly a fair amount as Christmas and video games go together like peanut butter and jelly or Mario and Luigi. Here is a brief history of Christmas themed video games throughout the years
The First Christmas Video Games(1981-1990)
Christmas games have been around since at least the 1980s with the release of the game Santa’s Sleigh Ride in 1981 on Apple II followed by Special Delivery: Santa’s Christmas Chaos on Commodore 64 in 1984, Ho, Ho, Ho! in 1985 and Santa’s X-mas Caper for the commodore 64 again in 1990. Much like other earlier games these games were pretty rudimentary and mostly involved you playing as Santa and trying to deliver presents.
Games of Christmas Past(1990-2013)
After the bevy of Santa-centric games in the 80s most of the Christmas games that came after were tie-in to christmas themed movies such as games for Home Alone(1990) and Home Alone 2(1992) released on multiple platforms as well as a tie-in to 1992’s Batman Returns and the Die Hard films(yes they are christmas movies/games) There was even a videogame adaption of the classic 1964 Christmas special: Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer that came out over 45 years too late on the Wii and featured a series of mini-games. Of course the end of the late 90s saw the introduction of the 8-game franchise Elf Bowling which involved Santa using his employees as bowling pins after they go on strike. The series was popular enough to get a film adaption in 2007. Established games even got in on the action with Holiday levels/expansions such as Christmas Nights into Dreams as shorter christmas themed version of the original game and Duke: Nuclear Winter an expansion of Duke Nukem 3D in 1998
Games of Christmas Present(2013-2024)
Batman, Christmas and video games combined once again in 2013 for a prequel game in the Arkham Franchise: Arkham Origins set on Christmas Eve followed by Spiderman joining the fun with 2020’s Spiderman: Miles Morales also set around Christmas. With the prevalence of DLC and live services games more christmas content is also being added to existing game such as the Winter Tour add-on for Mario Kart World Tour which introduced the level Merry Mountain among other things and many other games. In addition we have also seen a holiday prequel to Cthulhu Saves the World in Cthulhu Saves Christmas and a Rubber Royale Holiday Prologue Game. Beloved Christmas character the Grinch even got his own games: The Grinch: Christmas Adventures in 2023
Games of Christmas Future( 2025 and Beyond)
There is still some holiday themed game events to come before 2024 wraps up, but has of yet no major Holiday-themed games have been announced for 2025 or beyond yet, but why not a christmas fighting game? or a co-op platforming teaming up Rudolph and Frosty? or a horror game featuring Krampus and other christmas demons? or a Tell-tale Games retelling of A Christmas Carol? an Arkham-esque adaption of the Klaus comic by Grant Morrison or perhaps have a beloved character such as Spyro, Mario, Sonic or Crash star in their own holiday adventure? The potential creative gifts you can get when combining the holiday and video games can be never-ending.
That’s just a brief history of Holiday-themed video games. Let us know if we missed any of your favorites and which games you play every december or what holiday game you would like to see in the comments.
