#44: James Pond 2: Codename Robocod (Millennium, Amiga, 1991)

Spring is in full bloom, so clearly it’s the perfect time to talk about the true meaning of Christmas! OK, not quite. But Christmas is a subject that’s fairly unavoidable when discussing James Pond 2: Codename Robocod, a game that is absolutely drenched in its trappings. First and foremost, the plot revolves around the villain, Dr. Maybe, stealing all the toys from Santa’s workshop, which also serves as the game’s setting. But it goes deeper than that. There’s the forced cheerfulness of the fixed grins on the faces of its characters and the relentlessly upbeat music that never, ever goes away. There’s not one but two puns of exactly the calibre you might expect to find in a Christmas cracker joke right there in the name. And there’s even a bit of crass commercialism in the form of the introductory cutscene which devolves, without warning, into an advert for a particular brand of chocolate biscuit.