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Probably the most interesting thing about this particular homebrew is the custom cartridge you can play it in. While these cartridges are sadly no longer sold on the Retrozone website, if you find one, it might still be one that comes with built-in Christmas lights. These lights actually blink depending on what’s happening in the game, which is a very nice touch. During the time when you could buy the game you could also get a custom message put in the cartridge and the game itself, if you want a more personalised touch. The actual game itself is a pretty simple platformer with a holiday theme to it. Aliens have stolen Christmas presents all over the world, because they’re evil or something. As a small boy, with nothing but snow to defend himself, you take up the task of collecting all the presents, while avoiding the UFOs. Every level is made up of a single screen with platforms to jump on, presents to collect and UFOs to avoid. The screen wraps around, which is something you’ll need to keep in mind to reach certain places. Touching a UFO will take away one of your three lives but crouching will let you make a snowball, which stuns UFOs for a few seconds. That’s more or less it and while it’s not the most complex of games it’s reasonably fun, if not that much of a challenge. The graphics look nice and there’s a nice wintery song that plays through the game. If you are wanting a good Christmas-themed platformer on the SNES then you could do a lot worse than this, especially when you put it up against Daze Before Christmas.

While last year’s Christmas Craze was a simple single-screen platformer, 2012’s Snowball Fight is a different beast entirely. Just like Christmas Craze before it, you’ve got the option of either playing the ROM or ordering your own custom cartridge. Snowball Fight is basically a party game for one to four players, if you have the required multi-tap. Or, if you’re lacking in friends, you’ve got three different kinds of computer AI to go up against. Each colour-coded player is holed up on one side of the map and the goal is to hit the other players with snowballs. Every hit earns you one point and the player with the most points is the winner of the match. There’s only three buttons to worry about with one throwing a snowball forward, while the other fires one in either of the diagonal directions. You’ve also got trees and other obstacles that get in the way of shots, which can either help you or hurt you depending on what’s between them. You also get the occasional power-up by hitting snowmen, like extra fast snowballs or a deadly three-way throw. It’s a pretty simple game overall and it wouldn’t be out of place on something like the Colecovision, but if you’ve got friends over who are in the mood for some retro-styled winter fun you could probably do much worse.