Blog:Santaclaus is Coming to Town
Ho! Ho! Ho! Santaclaus is now on GDRI! No, not the jolly obese gentleman from the North Pole. That's "Santa Claus." This is "Santaclaus," the petite Japanese developer named after the jolly obese gentleman from the North Pole. The addition was inspired by the mention of programmer Michio Okasaka (岡坂道夫) in the comments of the previous blog post. Okasaka-san heads up this company started by Sunsoft staff in December 1994.
Not many games have come to us from the folks at Santaclaus, but they did do a few notable titles for their former bosses. Of those, I've only (as far I can remember) played the Saturn version of the Neo Geo fighting game Galaxy Fight. Looks great, plays great, but I couldn't tell you how it stacks up to the other versions. I like the music, too, but Santaclaus likely had nothing to do with that.
Santaclaus' most famous game is probably Astra Superstars for Sega's ST-V arcade system and the Saturn. The Saturn version of this colorful fighter is apparently one of the more expensive titles for that system. There's even a section of the Santaclaus website devoted to Astra, along with a couple of small Windows/Mac games centered around certain characters - a card game that doesn't appear to be available for download and a paper doll-esque "game" where you get to dress 10-year-old Rouge in various outfits (yay?).
In recent years, Santaclaus has been making mobile, Flash, and even Shockwave games like Sandra Witch, which features an underdressed titular character fending off giant balls.
An old version of the Santaclaus website's company profile has a list of games the team (or just Okasaka-san?) did at Sunsoft before Santaclaus was started:
- Bomber King: Scenario 2 / Blaster Master Boy / Blaster Master Jr. (GB)
- Batman: Revenge of the Joker (GB)
- The Pirates of Dark Water (SNES)
- Virtual Batting [ST-V] (AC)
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