Daze Before Christmas is a 1994 holiday platformer from SunSoft for the Sega Genesis. You guide Santa Claus through winter-themed stages to reclaim Christmas from a rival villain, with a standout mechanic: collecting a villain’s potion temporarily transforms Santa into Anti-Claus, a darker, more aggressive form. The game shipped primarily in Europe and Australia, giving it an outsized cult following among collectors who tracked it down.
How to play
Move Santa through side-scrolling stages, defeating enemies and reaching each goal. The Genesis buttons map to the keyboard as follows:
- Move: Arrow keys
- A / B / C: Z / X / C
- X / Y / Z: A / S / D
- Start: Enter
- Mode: Shift
Tips
- Trigger Anti-Claus on dense enemy clusters — the power boost is significant but brief, so positioning matters.
- Stage layouts are fixed, so every retry is faster: once you know where the hazards are, runs clean up quickly.
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