12 Games of Christmas: Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (Wii)
By adapting Christmas songs into animated films, Rankin/Bass Productions managed to have plenty of success in crafting Christmas classics. However, while their first films were adapting seasonal songs like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman that had narratives built into their lyrics, when they got to Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town they found they would have construct a story of their own. Choosing to go with an origin story for the holiday’s main figurehead, Rankin/Bass actually managed to combine his many components pretty naturally, explaining things like him being known as both Santa Claus and Kris Kringle quite well, coming up with plausible explanations for why he works with elves, and showing us how he met Mrs. Claus. The flying reindeer were almost out of nowhere, but the movie makes up for it with original characters like the Winter Warlock and his catchy song “Put One Foot in Front of the Other”. In 2011 though, 41 years after the original movie’s release, a video game for the Wii was made adapting this origin story into video game form, and honestly, it could have turned out much worse.
Carrying over the story of the film, players play as Kris Kringle as he grows into his famous role as the Christmas time gift giver. However, his formative years are much smaller in scope than the global reach he has now, the nearby village of Sombertown having toys outlawed by mayor Burgermeister Meisterburger in a fit of rage. Kris must try to avoid his guards while delivering toys to the girls and boys of the town, but he also needs to head off into the snow to get back to his workshop home to build more, encountering the initially evil Winter Warlock in his travels. Most of what happens in the movie is carried over in some form into the game but simplified such as Kris meeting the woman who would be his wife only barely being touched upon, but at other times the game stretches certain segments out much longer than necessary to try and pad out the level count to a Christmas appropriate 25. Going into Sombertown and leaving it a few times is the main way, but every now and then it gets back on track to the film plot, even featuring some voice lines and music to make it a bit more authentic. The wood and plastic Animagic style of the film is translated pretty well into video game computer graphics, meaning beyond the gameplay portions, it’s a pretty faithful adaptation of its source material.
Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town takes the safe route when it comes to game design, most of it being a pretty generic platform game. Most levels involve Kris needing to get to the end by jumping over slippery ice, leaping between snow-covered tree branches and roof tops, dancing on jack-in-the-boxes or compressing bellows for jump boosts, and avoiding occasional problems like town guards. Most of the levels are very straight paths to the end with a few necessary changes in elevation along the way to require some jumping, but if all you had to do was get to the level’s end these would almost be easy enough to do without looking at the screen, especially since there is no way to die or lose in a level. However, to make stages involve a bit more movement and the smallest bit of exploration, you do need to collect snowflakes that are floating all around, each level having a quota for how many you need to collect. Some levels are so forgiving you can just do it as a matter of course while heading straight towards the end, but others will require you to hop across mild platforming challenges, look in unexpected places, or get around a guard or two to collect enough to beat the level. If you do make it to the end without enough, it puts you back at the start for a do over, making the game pretty accessible for even the youngest of players since they can eventually win the stage.
However, the snowflake collection is a bit of an odd goal, mainly because it is the only goal. Some levels will pretend there are extra tasks to complete, such as delivering gifts to the moping children of Sombertown, feeding special food to reindeer to make them fly, or finding the letters kids wrote to Santa to ask for toys. None of these tasks are necessary or even all that interesting, usually just involving pressing a button to hurl your item at the kid or deer when you find them or waving to a forest friend to give you a letter. There are a lot of little moments where the Wii’s motion controls crop up for simple tasks like shaking a tree to knock loose some snowflakes, but the wiggling of the remote, despite reading your motions a little oddly, isn’t too much of a hassle. Many of these side tasks are entirely optional as well so you can bypass much of the remote waving, only a few required for jack-in-the-box jumps or to find the hidden stockings in each level. The incentive for getting hidden stockings or all the snowflakes isn’t too strong a motivator, getting 100% only rewarding you with pretty plain still shots from the film. Super Santa mode is unlocked after the game to make the collection easier anyway, giving you a super jump, super speed, and invisibility to avoid guards, but you do get a taste of these powers in regular levels as well as the reformed Winter Warlock will appear at times to bless you with a boost needed to progress or collect certain items.
Making the extra tasks outside of snowflake collecting unnecessary may seem like it reduces to the game to an incredibly plain and often dull platformer, the stages not packing any huge challenges and the only one that really breaks from simple jumping tasks being one where you automatically march behind the Winter Warlock and need to actually time jumps correctly to collect enough snowflakes. However, not requiring you to engage in these side tasks also helps it avoid the problems with the two common minigame types. One involves waving your Wii remote in a few set ways to build toys in the workshop, most of the motions reading well but some like the motion meant to imitate a hammer’s movement a bit more stingy in what it will accept. You don’t need to even complete any toys though since things automatically progress after time runs out, but it does make playing this game from the main menu for a high score likely to run into trouble as it refuses to accept the motions it can’t easily read. The much worse game though is the stocking stuffer game, where you need only wave your Wii remote over a house interior to fill it with presents. So long as your wrist works you can not only complete this game with ease, but you can conceivably never lose its endless mode from the main menu. Wave the cursor back and forth and you will eventually place enough presents to get the time bonus and move on to the next level where the challenge has not changed. Later levels in the main story feature the option to go into houses to play the stocking stuffer minigame or have children who will force you into making toys if you talk to them, so being able to skip these rapidly repetitive and poorly designed diversions because only snowflake quotas are necessary is actually a wise decision that keeps this game from being far worse.
THE VERDICT: Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town is the kind of game that would get a recommendation for a very young child since it has competent platform game controls and adapts its movie inspiration surprisingly well in both its story and visual style. However, the levels are pretty empty and bare bones in their design, meaning they won’t be able to excite an older player. Thankfully, only collecting snowflakes is required to progress, meaning you can avoid the minigames and sidequests that range from mindless to excruciatingly boring, and those snowflakes can even push you to scrape against a tiny bit of challenge in this otherwise far too easy game. By relegating most of its bad content to optional activities, a player can blitz through this short seasonal game and only feel a bit underwhelmed rather than irritated.
And so, I give Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town for Wii…
A BAD rating. As mentioned, a very young child might be able to enjoy the game, the snowflake collection goals asking for them to participate in a way that’s simple and accessible but isn’t just a guaranteed march to victory. There is even a two player mode where a player can join as Kris’s penguin Topper to help with collecting snowflakes, making this a pretty decent game for a parent and child to play around Christmas. However, being a good fit for its target audience doesn’t make its flaws suddenly not exist, and thus it does ultimately end up Bad, potentially even worse if the player embraces every time the repetitive minigames have the chance to appear. Neither of the minigames really have the substance to be enjoyable, one just about waving your arm around until you win and the other either being too simple to make a toy in or frustrating with it not reading your movements right. The sidequests are similarly bland and just slow down a game that already feels like it’s stretched itself thin with few ideas on how to fill time. Just taking a small break from forward progress to ask a bird if it has a letter isn’t an interesting gameplay addition, but the main game allows you to skirt most of it or not get judged for failing at it, that leniency allowing you to continue on your merry way.
Small things like Winter Warlock powers, the marching level, and having to look a bit more in some levels for the snowflakes mean that Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town manages to avoid its main game becoming dragged down by its mostly repetitive design, it’s just a shame the bigger breaks from the bog standard platforming are the parts that threatened to make it worse. In a few ways, Christmas entertainment is often held to a lower standard as long as it evokes the holiday season well enough, so despite it’s flaws, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town can provide a family a Christmas game that isn’t too egregious in its poor design, its workaround to its worst cases of repetitive and easy gameplay keeping it off of thin ice.