Xmas Games: Festive Freebies & Christmas Cassettes

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, when video games didn't take millions of man-hours and the national debt of a small country to produce. Before gamers had to sacrifice their first born child to afford to play a game, there was a time when during the festive season many software houses produced games for a low budget price or even gave them away for free. Back in the days of book-ended by 8-bit and 16-bit computer games young enchanted faces would press they rose red noses up against the window of the local store awaiting the arrival of the Christmas edition of their favourite computer magazine. Hoping and praying that taped to the front would be a whole world of festive freebies. That holy of holies, the Christmas cassette. Some lucky souls may even saved up their meagre pocket money to buy a low budget Christmas themed game, or find one nestled in the bottom of their stocking on Christmas morning. 
So what was out there at the time?  One of the was the insanely difficult Frosty The Snowman, which was given away with Commodore Format in 1990. A split-screen dual-player game, although you could play it in one-player mode. Even for the time this pixel-perfect side-scrolling platform game was infuriating, and probably wouldn't have even blipped most people's radars if it wasn't for the Christmas theme, and that it was free! A year later in 1991, Santa's Xmas Caper came out on a number of formats, such as the C64, the Speccy, the Amstrad CPC and even for the PC and the Amiga! A side-scrolling shoot-'em-up, in which Santa had to deliver presents while battling renegade elves. Also in 1991 originally released as a free disk was Xmas Lemmings, based on the immensely popular PC and Amiga game released that same year. 
First released a two, two and four level demo disks respectively in 1991 and 1992, the game was so popular that two separate sixteen level retail versions (Christmas Lemmings) were produced in 1993 and 1994. It was the instant classic suicidal rodent game we all knew and loved, but with bells on. The scenes were snow covered winter wonderlands, and the Lemmings themselves were all dressed in little Santa suits. I guess the only complaint that you could make about these games, was that they were too short. Just as you got into the Christmas spirit of saving the Lemmings (only as many as you needed to, the rest you happily watched die!) the game was over. The few demo levels and even the bigger retail versions were just not enough to keep you occupied, while your parents got hammered of egg-nog and mulled wine. Still that said, they were probably my favourite Christmas themed games.
Okay, so not done yet... As must give a begrudging bah humbug to a Christmas game that was only available on the ZX Spectrum. Moley Christmas, which was give away on the cover of Your Sinclair in 1987. As a final instalment to the awesome Monty Mole series of games, that started with Wanted: Monty Mole (1984) and was followed by the brilliant Monty On The Run in 1985. Well skip over Monty Is Innocent 1985), as it was rubbish and only came out on the Spectrum. Then is 1987 they released Auf Wiedersehen Monty, to which Moley Christmas was the sequel. And despite being the only one apart from the utter mistake that was Monty Is Innocent, that was exclusively a Spectrum game, it should have appeared on other formats.

In the game, Monty must collect the source code for his latest game, create master tapes and head down the M11 motorway to the Your Sinclair magazine offices, get the tapes ready for distribution at newsagents. A competition was run when the game was released. The final screen contained a message to the player. The first person to complete the game and send this message to the Your Sinclair was the winner.
Everyone loved old Monty Mole.
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