The Weekly WTF: Beware the Santa Demon of ‘Daze Before Christmas’

Maybe you're feeling pretty darn good about Santa right now. The fat ol' bastard might've given you that hoverboard or sexy Thai bride or whatever you've been angling for. But don't kid yourself, as you doze on the couch in a turkeytastic stupor. Saint Nick is no saint at all.

If you don't believe it, you've never seen him transform, Jeckyl and Hyde style, into the HUGE FURIOUS SLAVERING ANTI-SANTA OF DEATHLY DEATH. Hold on to your butts, it's time for Daze Before Christmas.

This little slice of weirdness hit the Sega Genesis in 1994. In some regions, at any rate. Its release was quite the eff up, arriving only in Australia before making its way to Europe in SNES form. Over here in the US of A, meanwhile, we remained Daze-free. Something else to be thankful for this holiday season, because it's wank.

In this toontastic platformer, a criminal band of snowmen has invaded the North Pole. What with the whole damn place being made of snow, infiltration probably didn't take months of planning in shady abandoned warehouses, with everyone smoking and gesticulating wildly at blueprints and such (this is how it's done, I saw it on TV).

Reindeer and elves alike have been kidnapped, and it's up to the Claus himself to rescue his buddies and do his festive duty.

This is done, naturally, by platformer-ing it up across a series of holiday-themed levels. Along the way, the big guy will bust out all kinds of powers we never knew he had. He's even pulled some kind of flamethrower magic out of his ass for this one.

And, as promised, you can transform into the badass power of Anti-Claus and wang evil rats in the face with your sack of toys. This is what we call a selling point, gentlemen.