I always feel a specific warmth in my heart when the wonderful winter holidays start approaching. Not only because Christmas is my favorite holiday of the whole year, but also because it’s a time when I start remembering many old favorites – favorite movies like “Elf” and “Home Alone”, favorite songs like “Let it snow” and “Rocking around the Christmas tree”, favorite sweets such as my gingerbread cookies and my mom’s baklava. Fond memories of past Christmases spent with my family start emerging in me.

I mentioned “Home alone”, which is an absolute Christmas classic that every human being on this planet knows. If I have to talk about myself – I never get tired of it and I watch it at least once every holiday season. Do you want to know the best part? It’s not only the movie, there’s also a great Sega Mega Drive game that I have loved ever since I turned 7 years old and my dad bought me my cartridge that I still have and play every now and then.

The game was released in 1992 for various platforms and consoles, but for Sega it was released in 1993. The game is based on the movie, but in general the action deviates from the script purely factually. A tiny example – in the movie, Kevin is with his family at the airport, where the confusion happens, which is responsible for him being alone and going to New York, and in the game, the difference is that at the airport, Kevin is chased by the two villains and his family is not there. There are other such discrepancies, but nevertheless the game is 60-70% based on the movie.

Of course, in the game we manage Kevin McAllister, who is alone, without his family, and has to survive in New York through a certain number of obstacles, levels and challenges. Some of the places we pass are the Plaza Hotel, Central Park, Kevin’s uncle’s house, Duncan’s toy store and other key locations from the movie.

In each of the levels, Kevin has a different weapon, sometimes two or three. These weapons are disassembled into parts that must be assembled throughout the level to complete the weapon and use it to shoot the baddies. Some of the weapons are slingshot, pie cannon, ice crossbow, baseball cannon, etc. In different places, there are also different types of delicacies that fill up Kevin’s life, such as pizza, milk, cookies, pie, sugar canes, etc.

The game is very Christmassy, ​​and of course the action takes place at Christmas, just like the movie. The music in the different levels is also very nice and somewhat different from all the other “8 bit” tunes I hear in the background of other games.

This game has been a big part of my childhood, which is why I decided to play it again this Christmas. I used to play this game always around the holidays and for a long time I couldn’t beat it. I remember this game as quite complex, both for mastering the controls, and for the logic (some levels are made like a maze that you have to find a way out of), and for the difficulty of the levels themselves. This Christmas I turned the game on for the first time in maybe 15 years and it only took me 2-3 tries to get through all the levels. Honestly, compared to other Sega games I play, this one wasn’t particularly easy, mainly because of the maze levels and the difficulty of the last 2 levels.

In the last level, there are so many NPCs that hit you – various pigeons that keep flying everywhere, ninjas that climb trees, owls, and those two villains from the movie. This level has a very complex strategy to pass, which I tried to complete at least 5 times. First you go around the entire level to find the parts of the strongest weapon while trying not to die from the ninjas and pigeons. Then you find the first bad guy, kill him somehow, find the second one, kill him too, then find the huge Christmas tree and barely make it to the top (where the game ends) because you’ve already been hit by so many enemies that I don’t know how you’re going to stay alive for the pigeons on the branches. Well, it didn’t work out for me. I decided that I would drive straight ahead, no matter what. Right from the start of the level I just started sprinting forward without collecting or killing anything. It’s very hard but you actually get to the huge Christmas tree in about a minute. With a bit more agility, I was able to climb to the top while the super fast villains chased me, so I didn’t do any of the complex logic, but I passed the last level in 1 minute.

The game is very enjoyable and brings back such fond memories of past Christmases from my childhood. The levels resemble situations from the movie, but the plot itself often diverges. I beat the game exactly on December 25th. We spent the whole day as a family, we ate a lot of sour cabbage (a Bulgarian traditional delicacy around Christmas), we drank hot chocolate, we took a long sunny walk around the neighborhood with the baby. Then we went home, drank more hot chocolate, laughed, watched Home Alone 2, and that night, when we put the little heiress to sleep, I grabbed the Sega and two hours later I had beaten the game. A complete Christmas utopia.