Developed and published by Zeppelin in 1990, Santa’s Christmas Caper is a rarity: it is a Christmas-themed “Bullet Hell” shooter that is actually not too bad.

Graphically, the game is excellent, with smooth horizontal scrolling, well-drawn backgrounds, and colourful sprites. Sonically, the game is good too, with an excellent SID chip rendition of Greg Lake‘s classic “I Believe In Father Christmas” playing away in the background.

Unfortunately the gameplay doesn’t quite match up to the sonics and visuals. Mostly because of frequent, impossible situations you’re faced with, and also the confusion caused by not knowing what you can fly through and what you can’t. Also, the boss battles are extremely poor, just like in the Spectrum version we covered last year.

Which leads me to believe that any potential this game may have had is destroyed by a lack of care from the developer. It’s a cynical cash-in!

One final thing to note: the C64 version is called “Santa’s Christmas Caper“, and the ZX Spectrum version is called “Santa’s Christmas Capers“. Publisher Zeppelin couldn’t even get that right! Also: the word “Santa’s” at the bottom of the screen is grammatically incorrect – it should have no apostrophe!

Merry Christmas from The King of Grabs!