Santron

"Jack Frost is determined to ruin Christmas, so he has spelled various items associated with Christmas! Use the new S.A.N.T.A.H.A.T.01 space fighter and put an end to Jack's mischief! Be on the watch out for perilous peppermint swirls, killer snowmen, kamikaze icicles, plasma spitting sugar mice, charging turkey legs, and other assorted twisted adversaries. But help is on hand, so lookout for useful floating presents, each with a power-up bauble inside... Only you can save Christmas, so strap in, and blast off!"

A simple vertical 'shoot em up' on the C64, a precursor to Zeta Wing which followed in 2020. Being on 16k restricts what you can do but there is plenty here that can even put some of the earlier commercial budget game efforts. This is mostly a re-skinned version of Neutron with a Christmas Theme. All graphics have been changes as well as Christmas themed music has been added.

There are nine levels in total made up of three levels which loop with increased difficulty. The mechanic of shooting waves for powerups isn't here yet so you have to watch out for the one power up on each level which you can collect to upgrade your weapon. There are two types of score bonuses that can also be shot to collect. Each level has an easy mid level boss and and end of level boss. You will see the same waves appear over the nine level's but in each loop they can fire more and more deadly and faster waves will appear.

Overall this is a nice update to Neutron and whilst mostly the same it does add a score tally between levels showing how many bonuses you have collected as well as having a congrats screen at the end.

00:00:00 Title
00:00:50 Level 1
00:02:34 Level 2
00:04:42 Level 3
00:06:54 Level 4
00:09:11 Level 5
00:11:31 Level 6
00:13:50 Level 7
00:16:22 Level 8
00:18:48 Level 9