Not having owned a Genesis back in the day, I was never made aware of many Sega fanboy cult classics. I remembered reading about ToeJam & Earl in gaming magazines around the time of its release, and the name only stuck with me because of its grossness. So in college, when my geeky friends and I would wax nostalgia about our favorite old-school games, I was always puzzled by the strange appeal of the game. I downloaded a Genesis emulator and an illegal ROM of the game to try it out (hey, we all experiment in college). The game wasn't bad and I found it to be mildly enjoyable, but it didn't seem to be the be-all and end-all of retro gaming. My friends explained that it had to be played with a friend. After trying that, I proved to be dead weight, as I was far more lackadaisical with my gameplay.
One thing that did catch my attention was the inclusion of all the presents scattered about. Due to the strange nature of the game, I wasn't about to question from where all of the wrapped gifts came. Yet my question was answered in one of the most logical ways conceivable: Santa! Having occured approximately two years before he decided that we didn't believe in him, perhaps delivering gifts to an alternate dimension of Earth was where his downward spiral began. In ToeJam & Earl, Kris Kringle makes sporadic appearances dropping gifts for all the good ... uhh ... aliens. You can either wait and receive whatever he gives you, or naughty boys and girls can attempt to sneak up on him and give him a scare, causing the bearded man to drop a whole slew of gifts.
