As long as it includes the semi-nude card of Bum's sister-in-law filled with his random insults and putdowns to me I'm a buyer!

Santa is in the sky with his sleigh, Player 1 controls him. Players 2 thru 4 are shooting rockets at him from the ground, Missle Command style (large explosion radii not necessary.). The game is timed, and once Player 1 is shot down, his time is recorded and Player 2 assumes the roll of Santa. This cycles through all the players. The player who can stay in the sky as Santa longest wins.

Edit to add:

Santa is capable of dropping Presents/Bombs. If these hit any of the people on the ground, they are unable to shoot Santa for the rest of the round. If Santa hits everyone on the ground with Presents before he is shot down, the round ends and he is given a 10 second bonus.

The Presents are also able to be shot out of the air, thus saving the life of the person below and allowing them to continue shooting Santa.

This adds more strategy to the game, as the Santa player doesn't have to drop Presents if he doesn't want the round to end. But, if he gets hit while milking out a few extra seconds, he loses the 10 second bonus. Also, the people on the ground can co-operate by saving each other from the dropped presents.

^ I like the missile command idea there Adam!

Edited for awesomness!

How about a canon-type game?  Where one player tries to shoot the canonball (snowball) as far as they can.  The cursor showing how far the snowball will go, will go up and down at a certain speed which will get faster as the levels progress, and will be stopped with the A button.  To get to the next level, a player will have to meet a point requirement to advance onto the next level, which every level will get a little bit harder to control the cursor (the cursor will go faster) than the previous.  1 player will play against themselves, seeing how many points they can aquire until not meeting the level requirement, which the game will be over. 

2 player mode (which can switch screens between the players) will have the same concept as 1 player, but the 2 players will compete against eachother, seeing who can get the most points.

The canon can be a snowman!

Probably a bit complex, but at least I tried.

My favorite winter past time as a youth was probably throwing snowballs at cars. I know you already made a snowball fight game, but I think throwing snowballs at cars would be awesome. You could have hidden characters, like when you hit a certain car NGD gets out and chases after you.

You could have Santa's sexy niece dancing around the north pole, while P1-4 are elves who have to make toys/earn money to throw her way .

I had an idea similar to TheNEScollector. You are in Santas workshop, and there is a big machine that is making toys. You are 1-4 elves that have to maintain stock/perform maintinence/wrap presents on the machine so the machine doesn't run out of parts/paint/break down.

There is coal for the furnace (steam powered i guess), paint, different toy parts, wrapping paper, a tool box sitting all on a supply shelf. There are more than four duties, so multi-tasking is a must. If an area of the machine starts smoking, then someone has to get the tool box. Presents need to be wrapped. The furnace needs to be stoked.

I'd say that each level gets progressively harder, and between every ? levels (maybe 5). There is a little cut scene where Santa comes to pick up another load of presents. Obviously, if the elves fail to make the presents, or blow up the machine, etc, there will be a corresponding gameover cut-scene with an angry Santa, and crying children.

You guys are getting really complicated.

I think simple is best, just create some sort of engine that will have its own depth in variation.

I vote for one of my all-time favorites that never got represented on the NES, Bust-a-Move.

You can have holiday colors (gold ornaments, red holly berries, green fruitcakes, silver jingle-bells, black coal lumps, white snowflakes -- all roundish things) and arrange the preloaded puzzle levels in holiday shapes like a tree, wreath, santa hat, etc. Mostly take existing level design and make it christmassey.

But the multiplayer is already "done" as all this game's iterations have really mastered the 2-player duel.

Plus it's a puzzler (good appeal), no scrolling and very simple code.

How about asking the D-pad hero guys if you could team up and make a version with christmas songs

How about hookers in Santa outfits. and they strip as time goes on.

how about this:

You need controll santa to get from point A to point B the feild your flying on contains obstacles you have to work around. For example: if point A were in the top left corner and point B was in the buttom right and there was a giant tree in the way and some fire balls you would have to fly around, if you hit something you would need to start over. As you progress in the game, the levels will get harder with more obsticles and maybe a time limit. 4 players could compete for the best time. Also, you could challenge your friends by building your own course. this (I think) would be easy to program becuase each level would only be one screen. I don't know how hard it would be to make it so you could make your own levels, but that would be a cool feature.

christmas tetris

I can't believe he is only just now starting on this! I would of thought you started working on this in May...oh, are we going to get a cool Bikini Babe christmas card again?

I like the idea of something that is 2-player, 4-controller or can be split out to be 4-player, 4-controller (on teams, basically).

Maybe a sled race down a randomly-generated track, where the 1st controller in the pair steers/drives and the 2nd controller in the pair shoots (either blows away obstacles, or can hinder the opponent in some way).

This is what came to my mind. The peices could be gifts. All looking wrapped and all. Some with bows all wrapped diferent. On the side you could have santa kicking back. Maybe a couple different pics. So when you get a tetris he...gets happy and... takes a drink. When yo fudge up he could .....burp or some thing. And x=mas trees. and Presents. Maybe it could be like tetris blast. Where santa burbs up a bad peice. And when he's happy a nice X-mas ornament comes out that destoyes a line. there could be a extra nice X-mas star that comes out very rarely that does something awesome. Or Rudolf flies on the screen and blocks your opponents screen. Make this 2 player battle. Could tie it in with the hype from the tetris championship,/ movie. I also think an X-mas themed tetris would sell pretty good. and be a little easy to program. But I know nothing about that part.

1-4 players

players start at the bottom and run to the top to get a present and bring it back to the bottom- most presents at the end wins.

single screen, you can move anywhere on the screen, punch fellow gift grabbers and make them drop their gift when you don't have a present.

simple. violent. xmas.

Have it based around the old PC game leisure suit Larry. Where santa is total scumbag, who enjoys drugs and hookers etc...

You could do a "keep away" game with up to 4 players. Maybe kids fighting over a present or something. They could snatch it from other players and try and hold onto it for as long as possible while being chased. Have a timer for each showing possession time and the one to keep it longest wins.

+1

make the main character dain, and dain has to save xmas by saving santa, kinda like mario with the princess, santa was captured by the grinch or something like that

HAHAHAHA!!! I just read the bolded part and stopped there and thought it was a great idea

How about a K.C. Munchkin! clone where you play a salvation army santa collecting spare change for the kiddies?

EDIT: To illustrate further... imagine a two-player competitive pacman game. Both players play competing "santas" trying to collect change (like the munchies in munchkin, or pills in pacman). All the walls are made of x-mas lights and sometimes lights burn out, changing the maze layout (much how the maze in munchkin sometimes becomes invisible, or the center square changing it's orientation), all while avoiding both the other player(s) and the ruffians/yapping dogs/shoppers attempting to take all your collected spare change.

Both players have individual scores based on number of collected coins, and some larger coins/dollar bills could function as a power-up allowing you to pass through the other player(s) and to defeat the "bad guys" returning them to the center square (considered to be the shopping center where salvation army santas are frequently seen). Once the coins on one stage are collected, the next level is accessed, player who has the most points gets a victory screen, or gains an extra life, or somesuch to encourage winning.

I would do this as a purely score-based competitive game, with players competing to greatest overall points, and each player losing all their points when they "die". Have like 10 or so levels, so that there is an ending. Could also use lives and player with the most coins after all players are dead wins.

This should be doable on the NES... it's not a complicated design aside from random mapping.

How about a game where 1 player is an icecube and the other player is a torch or something and one player has to chase the other. The goal is to survive for the longest time out of 5 rounds or something like that?

What about a christmas version of the classic kids game Memory? Different difficulty levels with multiple cards/closely looking pics. Put a time limit on in and 4 players flipping cards at once can make you not only pay attention to your card, but what the other players are doing. Plays 1-4 players or 1-4 computer players...Plus it is single screen, but different background/levels...should be easy puzzle game to program?

TREE MEMORY MINIGAME

When the game starts, a christmas tree decorated in a (pseudo-)random way is shown for X number of seconds. 2 to 4 players each get a tree and try to decorate it as closely as possible to the shown tree in Y number of seconds. Time can be variable or set depending on how complex you want the game to be. Points are awarded for number of correct elements, their proximity to the shown elements and time remaining when the tree was finished.

The screen is seperated into 2 sides or 4 quadrants depending on how you want to do it. The elements are things like lines of garland, lights, tinsel, strings of popcorn, bulbs, stars, candles, etc. The strings and lines can be tilted one way or the other, straight, or just one type if you want it to be less complex. A and B scroll through a list of the different elements in different orders, select places an element and start 'locks in' your tree as finished.

Original tree is shown, ponts are tabulated, highest score wins, # of each player's wins are shown, option to play again appears. New tree on a new game obviously.

The game-of-the-year award basically wins itself.

a two player boxing game santa vs elf .or some kind of evil santa theme