Sleigh bells. Gift wrap. Homicidal gingerbread men and heavily armed snowfolk. Mistletoe. These are the things that the holiday season's made of, at least if you go by the many Christmas expansions video games have to offer. In a bid to wring every precious cent out of the season, developers have long made a point of playing Santa with festive mission packs and candy cane-shaped firearms sold to their holly jolly fanbases.

The memories of these merry offerings may fade with the turning of the seasons, but as that time of year comes 'round again and we troll the ancient Yuletide servers, we wish to honor those jolly Christmas expansions of yore. Don you now your DLC apparel, prepare yourself for some ho-ho-horrible Christmas punnery, and lets dig into those precious holiday memories.

What do you get? A new, Christmas-themed game in the Monty Mole series. Perhaps you kids, with your Ratchet Daxter and your Grand Torino videogame entertainments, don’t appreciate that a new Monty Mole game was a pretty big deal once. Your job is to wrangle the source code for a new Monty Mole game, oversee mastering of said game, and get it to distributors in time for Christmas, even as you play that very game. Remember the season of Seinfeld devoted to the making of a fictional Jerry Seinfeld sitcom? That's nothing compared to the postmodern genius of Moley Christmas.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? By replacing the drudgery of actual games programming and distribution with scenes of hectic Santa-suited platforming and dodging holiday traffic, Moley Christmas pretty much puts a gun to your head and orders you to make with the festive, bitch.

What do you get? Some short demo levels of then-huge Lemmings, in which the suicidal little creatures romp in the snow and wearing Santa costumes. This concept proved to be so popular that two full games were launched around it. Still, it's a bit of an odd bird. Why do the “basher” lemmings have just as much trouble digging through fresh powder snow as they would solid rock? What’s the point of keeping the moronic critters alive through all manner of peril, only to bake them into a Christmas pudding? But meh, they're wearing Santa suits, so we’ll give it a pass.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Christmas Lemmings threatens to succumb to a very merry malaise: it’s so bursting with holiday cheer it could almost make you sick. The game averts this outcome though by providing you with hundreds of Santa-looking merry-makers, all of whom can be exploded at your merest whim.

What do you get? Two levels of cult Saturn-era Sega action-adventure NiGHTS into Dreams, set during Christmas and featuring date-sensitive holiday content. The limited edition of NiGHTS wouldn’t turn into Winter Nights until November, but wait another month after that, and the game would bust out the seasonal festivities. Of course, you could just tell your Saturn every day was Christmas, and NiGHTS would be none the wiser.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? With all those presents, Christmas trees, sleighbells and techno-rearranged Christmas carols on offer, Christmas NiGHTS is a bit like eggnog. It’s great during the appropriate season, but yearly access would probably make you ill.

What do you get? Jazz Jackrabbit is a hare who collects carrots and fights turtles (convoluted Aesop shout-outs FTW). In his three(!) holiday games, he does those things in the snow, set to a sleigh-bell-accented backing track. Audiences were disgusted by the games’ slapdash approach to seasonal biology (neither jackrabbits nor turtles are greatly active in the winter months), which is the only reason Jazz Jackrabbit is never today mentioned in the same breath as Mario or Sonic.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Holiday Hare’s leading speculates the Jackrabbit holiday games “may become part of the next generation’s holiday traditions.” Evidently, adding a “snow on the rooftops” effect to the game’s menu fonts went a long way.

What do you get? A couple of Christmas trees that sit in Station Square and display messages wishing best of the holidays, joining you in waiting with bated breath for then-impending Y2K. You're hardly whisked away to a winter wonderland, though. By and large, the whole affair stays the same, but the sunny downtown Square has a couple ropey-looking trees in it. Being as this isn't even DLC so much as a limited-time key for pre-existing content, you’d think there could be some dodgy late-‘90s snow effects or something.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? You are if you go close to the trees and listen closely: it would play you an acapella version of the music from Christmas NiGHTS.

What do you get? In Star Wars Galaxies, Rebels and their sympathizers join in celebrating the Star Wars universe’s greatest holiday festival. That would of course be Wookiee Life Day, invented for the single most reviled piece of Star Wars media ever produced: the Star Wars Holiday Special. As Wookiee Life Day isn’t actually a celebration of Christmas per se, the game can do whatever it likes with seasonal tradition. What it likes is to expand the mythology of the Holiday Special so that Wookiee Life Day is at once mortifyingly sweet and kind of heartwarming. You know, like Christmas itself.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? How could you fail to be? Just as the Holiday Special enriched the lives of everyone except George Lucas (who probably sleeps OK at night regardless), Star Wars Galaxies’ Life Day brings cheer into the homes of all who participate. Except those playing as the Empire: their official mandate is to grief the whole celebration.

What do you get? An installment of Sam and Max in which every Christmas trope is rehashed, subverted and twisted into a plot that also involves demonic possession, corporate meddling and the imminent Apocalypse. It's pretty seamlessly done, so it makes us wonder how game designers until 2007 to capitalize on the fact that Santa is an anagram of Satan. Puns and video games – who knew those tastes could go together?

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Sam and Max could take Tax Day and turn it into an occasion for festive merriment. By the time you’ve digested the , you'll be forgiven for just not having any idea what to do with yourself.

What do you get? Santa costumes. You could dress your characters up and use them to traumatize viewers too young to have their notions of Kris Kringle marred by the film Silent Night, Deadly Night. For a series that's endured the bolting-on of everything from bug-catching nets to diminutive Jedi warriors, the ability to make your characters dress like a pissed-off mall Santa is par for the course. As long plenty of ludicrous ass-kicking remains, the spirit will endure.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Like fun you are. A couple measly red suits cost two bucks! Charging for this kind of frippery is basically forcing hardscrabble penny-pinchers to choose between seeing new outfits or eating Christmas dinner.

What did you get? The same juicy, slashy goodness you've come to expect from Fruit Ninja, but now there's a snow globe! To be precise, the snow globe is you, and as you flail your arms in a desperate attempt to reach that escaping coconut, your silhouette is replaced with a lovely, snowy landscape. Plus, your ninja-bladed hands have become candy cane blades, the most fearsome of all Christmas weapons. Everything else is pretty much the same, except that the master of fruit is wearing a Santa hat and instead of getting the multi-slice pomegranate, you get a fruitcake. I've always wanted to destroy one of those.

Were you filled with holiday cheer? Sometimes it's the little things that make the season special. Yeah, you're still slice and dicing tropical fruits, but the wintery hints are just so whimsical you'd have to be a Scrooge not to crack a smile.

What do you get? A lot of weirdness, which is good, because it wouldn't be Saints Row otherwise. While the Saints are decorating their base of operations with all sorts of holiday livery, a cybernetic Shaundi from the future appears and claims that the boss must defeat a corrupted Santa Claus with nothing but some pop-guns and the joy of the season. The boss isn't huge on that idea at first, but after blowing away Santa's gingerbread army, s/he inevitably gets into the spirit. You might say that his/her heart grew three sizes that day.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? This much holiday merriment in one place would be as cloying as a mug of melted candy canes, if it was at all serious. As it is, the Saints make their cybernetic, trigger-happy holiday hijinks just funny enough that ending on a cutesy Grinch reference is entirely tolerable.

What do you get? Two missions in an inexplicable Christmas town full of murderous, gun-totting snowmen. In How Marcus Saved Mercenary Day, arms dealer Marcus calls on the vault hunters to travel through a wardrobe to the annoyingly whimsical land of Gingerton and check on a lost gun shipment. That explanation creates way more questions than it answers, but there's no time to think about that as you're thrown into an adorable winterland where everything is out for your blood. There you meet the unnervingly shirtless Smaller-than-average Timothy and defeat a vicious snow-overlord named Tinder Snowflake.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? If you spend the entire game trying to figure out what a holiday about contract killers could possibly have to do with awkward Dickensian knock-offs, probably not. But if you think a Psycho singing Carol of the Bells is hilarious, you'll probably love this whole thing and get some sick loot out of the deal. And in the end, isn't that what Mercenary Day is REALLY about? No seriously, that's a real question.

What do you get? A content pack as fat as jolly ol' Saint Nick. The Minecraft Festive Mash-Up Pack contains 36 new avatar skins, as well as a feature that transforms your Minecraft world into the sort of joyful snowscape that Jingle Bells was written about. There's also a new, jollified version of the Minecraft soundtrack, giving the pack that extra holiday tinsel it needs to round it all out. This festive mash-up is currently exclusive to Xbox consoles, though Microsoft has claimed it will appear on other systems in the near future. Still, looks like the corporate overlord might be playing favorites this Christmas. Just a guess.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? With this many semi-square Christmas trees, white blocks replacing brown blocks, and , how can you not get into the holiday spirit?

What do you get? It's the most wonderful time of the year, and what better way to show it than with completely impractical festive costumes? Whether it's a sexy snowman, a sexy angel, or a sexy badly-wrapped present (seriously, someone get these girls some gift paper before they die of hypothermia), this Christmas costume set has you covered. Heck, even Hayate and Ein join the party as sexy reindeer, so there's something here for everyone. Except maybe people who don't want to sit in their living rooms shivering in empathy. Can't help you there.

Are you filled with holiday cheer? Just like with Soulcalibur, the idea of laying down hard-earned holiday money for a bunch of costumes is painful, especially when the pack costs a whopping $18. Holy mother of mistletoe! And yes, it only contains the costumes (a seasonally appropriate twelve of them), so you must really want to see the Dead or Alive cast in barely-there holiday attire to make this one worth it.

'Tis the days before Christmas, and all through the 'net, devs are offering expansions you may want to get. But take heart: memorable as they may be, there's only a few you'll want under your tree. Which of these expansions do you think is the best? Is there something much better you'd like to suggest? Say so in the comments, and have no fear - if you hate all of these, there's always next year!

Is it beginning to feel a lot like Christmas? Keep that feeling going with .

Christmas is great. As a result, a lot of people like it. But, as is the case with everything a lot of people like, there are folk out there more than ready to capitalise on its popularity with Distinctly Less Than Great products. Despite modern games not lending themselves too well to seasonal theming (as I mentioned in ), history is littered with fairly stinking releases designed to cash in on the finest reindeer and snowman-based holiday of all. The '80s and '90s, with their quick development turnarounds and cheap publishing costs, were a particularly dark period.

So I decided, on this most joyous of Christmas Eves, to name the guilty. Read on, and I shall identify and bluntly critique the worst offenders. You'll get to have a fair old laugh at my pain along the way, and at the very least you'll gain a newfound appreciation of the games and consoles you'll be getting tomorrow, however many hours of updates and patches you might have to go through before the fun.

How crap is it? So crap that it defies my natural instinct to throw reasoned, critical gamz jarnalism at it. It’s just unremittingly rancid. A side-scrolling shooter so basic that it barely even exists, Santa's Xmas Capers is less an exercise in frustration, more an exercise in WTF.

You control a reindeer-led sleigh (which bizarrely does not at all contain Santa; presumably any activity mirthsome enough to warrant the label of 'caper' involves not being in this game). Endless scrappy sprites 'representing' Christmas Things are hurled at you. The collision detection murders you instantly, and you're booted back to a title screen screeching an out-of-tune We Wish You a Merry Christmas. Forever. There is rumour that the game is currently being rebooted as Satan's Xmas Capers, as playing it is exactly like being in Hell.

How crap is it? Pretty crap. It’s hard to truly hate any game so devoid of substance that you won’t play it for more than two minutes (in your entire life), but regardless, Sober Santa is crap. Santa is on a roof. You move him around to collect booze, which inexplicably spawns on that roof, rather than near the fireplace, at the bottom of the chimney he’s supposed to be going down. With every drink, he gets more boozey, and thus more difficult to control. Eventually he falls off the roof, whereupon you close the browser tab and ever think of Sober Santa again.

It’s taken me four days to write this entry, so forgettable is the game that every time I wrote half a sentence, the very experience of even having played it would drift from my mind as if some barely-remembered fever dream. Hardly perceptible, but still rather unpleasant with it, Sober Santa is the silent fart of Christmas games. But at least it doesn’t linger.

How crap is it? Legendarily. As in ‘12 on Metacritic’, crap. Originally parped out as a freebie PC game, Elf Bowling, along with its sequel, was later put out at retail on the DS and Game Boy Advance. That was a big mistake. Not only because charging £20 for this perfect snowstorm of bad controls, bad visuals and bad sound is a recipe for an unwinnable battle against karma, but because putting Elf Bowling out as a ‘real’ game allowed real critics to have a go at it. And we eviscerated the thing, with 100% justified ferocity.

Oh, I’m sorry, did I say “along with its sequel”? That implies that Elf Bowling was a relatively localised disturbance. In actual fact there were six more after that, part seven even having the affront to call itself “Elf Bowling 7 1/7: The Last Insult”. Not only does that a) strongly imply that the devs know how shit these things are, and b) show a total lack any respect for either originality or the Naked Gun series (both big no-nos in my book of values), but it wasn’t even the last game. Elf Bowling: Hawaiian Vacation arrived afterwards. This stuff is the wildly spreading Black Death of Christmas games.

How crap is it? Crappier than you might like to believe. Briefly a Huge Deal in Europe due to the popularity of the Commodore Amiga home computer in the early '90s (and more specifically said format's continued, desperate, agonisingly hopeless attempts to breed its own answer to Mario and Sonic), Robocod reviewed bizarrely well back in the day, largely down to it’s being a bit of a looker and packing a rather cool gimmick in the form of its aquatic hero's stretchy robotic midriff, which allowed him to reach otherwise unattainable heights by way of a hyper-extended spine.

Some loved it, but for those of us who actually had access to the plumber and the hedgehog, it elicited only the most awkwardly polite of weak plaudits in the face of our friends' enthusiasm. Ultimately, for all the jaunty presentation of the jolly Santa's Workshop setting, the platforming just wasn't that good. Vague, overly floaty, empty, and a bit abstract, it was typical of a lot of the substandard western platformer design of the day, and thus paled in comparison to the NES, SNES and Mega Drive's more tightly designed big-hitters. By way of its original tie-in to Penguin chocolate biscuits, it was also one of the earliest pioneers of in-game advertising, so we have that to thank it for too. THANKS, JAMES POND.

How crap is it? Diabolically. Yes, it’s older than space, but I’m not going to give it any excuses based on age. This thing would be a stinker in 2727 or 9000 BC. You’re a snowman. You jog from left to right. Every so often you die for no discernable reason. Every time you do, you return to the far left and start all over again, creeping, existential terror growing with each and every repetition. That is all that happens. Forever. There is no reason. There is no explanation. There is only futility and death. Frosty the NOOOOOOOOOOOOOman, more like.

The poor fucker must be begging to be released from that accursed silk hat. How sweet it would be to melt back to the cold oblivion from whence he came.

How crap is it? On the surface, not too crap. Yes, it’s a generic platformer, in that fairly dull, western-designed style I was talking about earlier, but it looks nice, and Santa is animated marvelously. And his intermittent transformations into the powered-up, Krampus-style Anti-Claus are a fun little twist, albeit a potentially worrying forerunner to The Werehog. So why’s it on this list? Simple. Bad writing cannot be tolerated.

Watch . Try to read the entirety of the game’s intro. It’s only three screens long, but it feels like it goes on longer than a traffic jam through the very bowels of Hades. The most bland, uneventful story. The most tortured, awkwardly hammered-together ‘poetry’. A seemingly randomised syllable structure for every stanza. Sentences that barely mean anything. A total disregard for grammar. And then the first level intro-card appears. “SANTAS HALLWAY”. Are here multiple Santas? No there are not. So use a freaking apostrophe. Kids are reading this, for God’s sake. What do I want for Christmas, Santa? Just basic, primary school-level linguistic understanding for all.

How crap is it? Okay, maybe it’s a bit unfair to put this one on the list. Back in 1984, it probably wasn’t bad. As Santa, you fly through the skies, collecting presents dropped by floating angels, slinging them, Paperboy-style, down chimneys, and occasionally entering houses for a bit of rudimentary stealth-gifting amid nocturnal corridors patrolled by unpredictably marauding children.

But there are two factors to consider. Firstly, if you can find me a game on a 1984 home computer that still plays well today, then I’d find you a dirty liar, or at the very least someone with depressingly low standards. Secondly, this thing is quietly horrifying. For starters, the limited sprite-work means that Santa’s sleigh doesn’t so much have reindeer leading it, but rather a severed deer-head spiked totemically onto the front of it. Additionally, those kids make Santa explode. Yeah. Santa-guts all over the house come Christmas morn. Jolly. And as for those angels? No faces. Not even any heads. Just halos. Can we trust the gifts of such macabre, faceless beings? No, no we cannot. That is some Doctor Who-level shit going on there.

Okay, so I've sort of already done that gag, but it's Christmas Eve, and I want to put this one to bed quickly so that I can go off and start drinking White Russians. And after trawling through that lot, I think we all deserve one or three. Any suggestions of other crappy Christmas games I might have missed? If you've been so unfortunate enough to have played one, drop it in the comments so that we can share your pain.

And if you're looking for better Christmas games to play over the holidays, I have a couple of suggestions to help you out. For a list of generally well-suited festive fun, have a look at has you covered. Have a splendid one, all.