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[[Image:Santaclaus.gif|right|Santaclaus logo]]
Ho! Ho! Ho! Santaclaus is now on GDRI! No, not the jolly obese gentleman from the North Pole. That's "Santa Claus." This is "[[Company:Santaclaus|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 [[Talk:Blog:Bomb's Your Uncle|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 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfJwVMemd7Y 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 [http://www.santaxsanta.com/ast/ 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 [http://www.santaxsanta.com/sw/ Sandra Witch], which features an underdressed titular character fending off giant balls.

[http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://santaxsanta.com/about.html 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)

<div align="right">[[User:CRV|CRV]] 13:29, 16 September 2009 (UTC)</div>

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