Wanted: Monty Mole – a British classic, sort of (Picture: Pixel Games UK)
GameCentral examines 80s classic Monty On The Run and why it’s important to remember forgotten retro games even when they’re not very good.
If you are American or Japanese then it is relatively easy to relive your childhood through the medium of video games, with even many obscure titles available on modern formats. If you’re a British gamer though the only nostalgia you’re allowed to experience is that of other people’s favourites. If you grew up in the 80s and early 90s, on home computers like the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, or Atari ST then the majority of their exclusive games are impossible to play on anything but emulators.
The 8-bit era is especially poorly served, since consoles were rare at the time in the UK (and we think Europe as a whole) and so many games were produced locally in the UK. A lot of these were arcade conversions, and there were some US imports, but the most popular games were often made by small British companies that no longer exist and whose games are remembered only by an increasingly small group of older fans.
It’s a frustrating situation, even if the economics are easy to understand, but it’s complicated by the fact that as fondly remembered as many of these games are, almost none of them stand up to the quality of the best Japanese-made titles of the era. In the UK, in the mid-80s, Monty Mole was no less famous than Super Mario, but the games themselves bare almost no comparison.
The Monty Mole franchise was originally created by Sheffield-based publisher and developer Gremlin Graphics. Gremlin has long since closed its doors but many of the staff went on to form Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing developer Sumo Digital. Meanwhile, original co-founder Ian Stewart has bought up much of the back catalogue and that has allowed for this compilation.
It’s not the entire Monty Mole oeuvre though, as the Spectrum-only sequel Monty Is Innocent is not included and neither is Impossamole – the only time the series escaped from the 8-bit era. We assume it’s a rights issue but luckily they’re the two least interesting entries in the franchise, so it’s no great loss.
The first entry in the series was Wanted: Monty Mole in 1984, which in terms of the Spectrum version was a fairly straightforward Manic Miner clone. Released a year earlier, Manic Miner is one of the few UK games of the period that does get an occasional re-release, and at the time was one of the biggest and most influential games in the country.
It and Monty Mole are both platformers, but they have almost nothing in common with Super Mario. Both are flip-screen games that emphasis slow and careful movement, rather than fast action. Pixel perfect precision is needed at every moment, as you try to avoid enemies with very strict movement patterns, that will instantly kill you if you touch any part of them.
Success relies on a lot of trial and error and rote learning, as you discover the exact spot you need to jump from to avoid an enemy, and… it’s really not very much fun nowadays. This remaster offers an invaluable rewind option, accessible via the left trigger, but even then the whole concept of the game is an exercise in frustration and unfairness.
Auf Wiedersehen Monty – you get the Spectrum and C64 versions of each game (Picture: Pixel Games UK)
The precision platformer wasn’t a uniquely British concept – the American made Impossible Mission is arguably the pinnacle of the sub-genre – but it is one that quickly faded out of fashion, especially by the end of the 16-bit era.
The Commodore 64 version (both are included) of Wanted: Monty Mole is very different in terms of graphics, including the fact that it scrolls instead of just flipping screens, but it’s just as aggravating. What’s far more interesting about the game is its cultural context, since the whole concept is inspired by the Miner’s Strike, with a stand-in for Arthur Scargill as the main villain.
Monty himself is portrayed as a scab miner trying to feed his family, while collectibles such as ballot papers and hairspray are contemporary references, specific to Scargill, that cannot be intuited nowadays unless you’re old enough to remember the tabloid coverage of the Miner’s Strike.
The game isn’t necessarily pro-Thatcher though and Stewart admitted to us that the political elements were pure opportunism in order to get the game talked about by the mass media – which went exactly to plan when it got a spot on every news bulletin in the country.
Stewart subsequently attempted to atone for the game’s questionable stance on the strike by donating 5p from every copy sold to the Miner’s Welfare Fund. Which considering the game sold around 20,000 copies in the first six weeks makes around… £1,000.
As we said, all of this is far more interesting than the game itself and even to this day it’s almost unheard of for a major video game release (which was what this was at the time) to feature references to current events, whether in the UK or elsewhere.
Monty On The Run -it sounds better than it looks (Picture: Pixel Games UK)
1985’s Monty On The Run is regarded as the best of the series, although the gameplay is only a little more complex (closer to Jet Set Willy this time, than Manic Miner). That means it’s still a complicated flip-screen platformer, that requires pixel perfect movement by a character that jumps in a peculiarly ungainly manner. Although it’s the level of finickiness needed for climbing and jumping off ropes that is the absolute worse part of the controls.
If you’ve got the patience, it is the closest one of the games gets to being enjoyable from a modern perspective. But factor in the glorious Rob Hubbard soundtrack and it’s one of the best games ever made. It’s laughable to compare Monty Mole to Super Mario Bros. (which was released the same year) in terms of gameplay but when it comes to the soundtrack… they’re almost equals.
The music in 1987’s Auf Wiedersehen Monty was by both Rob Hubbard and Ben Daglish – the two most acclaimed video game composers in the UK at the time – but, again, the game is nowhere near as notable. It’s the same flip-screen platforming as before and even by 1987 that was beginning to seem old-fashioned, and so it ended up being the last of the traditional games (Impossamole was a sort of pseudo-reboot, closely modelled on Rick Dangerous).
Moley Christmas – some of the games are Spectrum-only (Picture: Pixel Games UK)
Also included in the compilation is Moley Christmas, which was originally released for free with an edition of Your Sinclair magazine, and Spectrum spin-off Sam Stoat: Safebreaker – which features less platforming and yet manages to feel even more random and unfair.
It’s nice to see them included but – and we seem to say this with almost every retro compilation – it would’ve been nice to see some museum content to add context to the games and offer some behind the scenes information. There’s none of that though, not even a scan of the manual (or cassette inlay as it would’ve been back then).
We’re not going to give The Monty Mole Collection a score, because we just can’t bring ourselves to give it a low one. The games are both a product of their time and the incredibly low budgets involved and while they might not hold a candle to Super Mario and co. they’re very different games. And that’s one of the reasons they deserve to be remembered.
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We couldn’t recommend this compilation to anyone that hasn’t played the games before, unless they were specifically being bought as a historical artefact, but at £7 this is no cash grab. Technically, The Monty Mole Collection is only available on Switch, but publisher Pixel Games UK have all the games available separately on Steam, although for a more expensive overall price.
They also publish dozens of contemporaries, including Super Cars, Match Day, Summer Games, Horace Goes Skiing, Kikstart, and Trailblazer. We can’t pretend any of those have much to offer modern gaming either, but many were influential in their day and it’s important that they, and the whole culture of early video games outside of the US and Japan, is not forgotten.
Formats: Nintendo Switch
Price: £6.99
Publisher: Pixel Games UK
Developer: Imagine Software (originals: Gremlin Graphics)
Release Date: 8th January 2024
Age Rating: 3
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GameCentral examines 80s classic Monty On The Run and why it’s important to remember forgotten retro games even when they’re not very good.