Every year on Let’s Play With Brigands we do a holiday party stream. It’s arguably my favorite stream of the year as everyone’s always especially happy for the holidays and I get to enjoy some festive decorations, drink some festive beverages, and play some festive games.
Unfortunately, there’s a very short supply of festive, holiday themed video games, at least quality ones.
The one exception is Home Alone, and specifically Home Alone for the Sega Genesis. It still holds up year after year and 30 years after its release which is why it’s the de facto holiday game I like to play during this stream every year.
Home Alone Sega Genesis
I make the point to specify the Sega Genesis version of Home Alone as it’s far and away the best version of the game to me.
We even just put together a complete walkthrough in devoting a class in our Video Games 101 to it:
When Home Alone was released during the Holiday season of 1990, it quickly became a box office sensation, holding the number 1 spot for 12 consecutive weeks which is unheard of today.
It’s no surprise that multiple developers rushed to cash in on the success of the film, which is why there are probably half a dozen versions of the game.
I can’t speak for all of them outside of reading about them, but the NES version looks and plays horribly. Home Alone 2 was just awful.
But Home Alone for the Genesis (which I discovered via the Game Gear version which was identical to the Genesis version) hits a very nice sweet spot of being challenging and replayable year after year.
The gameplay focuses on the trap setting and house defending of the film, but instead of protecting just his own house, Kevin’s (an 8 year old child, just to remind you) tasked with protecting the entire 5 house neighborhood.
Instead each house, Kevin finds components and ammo for making DIY guns to slow down and inflict enough pain in the Wet Bandits Harry and Marv until they get driven away for a moment.
You continue to do this for 20 minutes until Chicago’s cops can be bothered to come in with the assist and arrest the bandits.
Home Alone Gun Guide
On the easier difficulty, the guns are assembled for you in your menu when you bring it up.
Once you try Expert mode (meaning Chicago’s finest take an EXTRA 20 minutes, 40 overall, to catch the Wet Bandits), you don’t get this luxury.
As such, you need to know which components work together to make the guns in Home Alone.
As part of our Video Games 101 class on this holiday classic, we’ve put together this Home Alone gun guide for your convenience:
Download Home Alone Gun Guide:
Expert mode is still a challenge to me today, and there’s a fair amount of luck involved in finding enough ammo for your guns especially early on.
It’s quite the testament to say that this game is still a challenge and still fun, 30+ years after its release.
So let’s raise a cold glass of egg nog to this holiday classic which stands alone and above a field of forgettable and downright awful holiday games, including other games bearing the same name!