Christmas games were seldom seen a few generations ago and it’s easy to comprehend why. Development costs swiftly rose around the time the Xbox 360 and PS3 launched, and creating something that would only have a shelf-life of a month or two in the run-up to Christmas would be an extremely risky proposition for any publisher. These days things are different, with budgets lower and smaller titles able to find their niche via digital distribution. The Switch eShop is perfectly suited for this kind of thing, able to provide quick gaming fixes for those looking for something specific, be it a puzzle game, a short visual novel, or a 2D platformer that sees Santa spending an excessive amount of time leaping around in his underwear.
The Legend of Santa resembles Super Mario World, featuring 16-bit style visuals and even sporting similar backdrops, but it plays more like Super Mario Bros. 3. Featuring three short chapters, it sees our rotund hero running, jumping, swimming, leaping on penguin’s heads, and throwing projectiles such as candy canes and what appears to be lumps of coal. Rather than growing larger and smaller, taking a hit will see Santa’s modesty reduced. Each stage features a single mid-way checkpoint, but restarts aren’t instant – you’re thrown back to the map screen upon death. This was presumably due to maps having a couple of routes, with some stages optional, which ultimately only serves to make a short experience even shorter.

One thing it gets right is the feel of a Mario game, as like the classics of yore, some jumps require you to hold the run button for extra height. Like the classics it imitates, it has a few trickier moments where you’ll need to avoid fireballs by watching their patterns, or time jumps onto moving platforms perfectly. Most enemies can be easily avoided though, again mimicking the attack patterns of Mario’s adversaries – right down to a skeleton that throws bones.
There’s a bit of variety on display, including auto-scrolling stages and underwater levels. Each area – with the third chapter being Halloween themed, hence the October release date – also has a boss to beat. The music, too, changes regularly. Rather than featuring chiptune renditions of Christmas songs, it has a modern ‘CD quality’ (if you will) musical score with customary sleighbells. This goes some way to making the experience feel less cheap than it may seem.

At some point when playing though, you’re going to be hit with a sudden realisation. Two of them, in fact. The chapters are self-contained games; a single world with a handful of stages to beat. You start with five lives and can gain one or two additionally throughout stages or by collecting 100 cookies, but upon being faced with a ‘Game Over’ you’re thrown back to the title screen. Scrubbing all progress means starting anew, even if you died on that world’s boss. It’s a thrifty way to artificially extend the game’s meagre 30 min runtime to 1-2 hours, especially when the boss’ attack patterns appear purposely sporadic. The other realisation? These chapters are in no way connected. You’re able to leap into any of them freely, which isn’t a bad thing for on-the-go play, but there’s no sizeable connected adventure here; just three disconnected chapters to play through. Imagine playing Super Mario World and the game ended after Yoshi’s Island, the first location on the map. That’s The Legend of Santa.
It isn’t badly presented – it can be played using standard controls or with the touch screen, and there’s an array of screen size options that mimic the aspect ratios of the NES and SNES. It even has a four-player mode. But this isn’t a meaty homage to Nintendo’s masterpieces. It’s merely a sampling; a handful of stages on a single screen map with a single boss to bring that chapter to a close before abruptly throwing you back to the title screen. It’s an ineffective way to hold somebody’s attention, and having all 18 stages play out back-to-back a la Super Mario Bros. – along with continues and a tonne of extra lives – would’ve made for a more pleasurable experience. As it stands, it’ll only just about suffice for a road trip.
Joshua Bringle’s The Legend of Santa is out 28th October on PS5 and Switch. A PC version is also available.