Impossamole

Yes, you can now own the worst Monty Mole game on Steam. That's probably unfair to Impossamole, but I'd much rather be playing Monty on the Run or Auf Wiedersehen Monty. The Monty series has its roots in satire, beginning with the titular mole stealing coal during the miners' strike of 1984. After a few well-received instalments came Impossamole, jettisoning the satire for a bland "Monty as a superhero" plot and rather aimless console-style platforming, at a time when home computers were already getting flooded with console-style platformers. Yet... Thumbs up? Can't really judge it on its predecessors when they're not on Steam yet. At the price it's a decent little game, and an interesting throwback to a more innovative era in gaming. Presented in what I assume is the original PC conversion, it certainly looks colourful and slick. And the title theme is a cover of Rob Hubbard's Monty on the Run, it's got to score some points just for that.

I remember playing this game on the TurboGrafx-16 in the early '90 so I was surprised to see when it was released on Steam. Well, it's pretty much a straight port of the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine version of the game. You play the part of a character called Monty Mole wearing a super hero outfit going around and kicking enemies into the shape of a box, tossing them around and using power-ups to help you along the way. The game plays using the original 4:3 aspect ratio and I didn't see any option to stretch to fullscreen. It wasn't a problem for me but I'm sure others would like to see that option. Also, it's not mentioned in the store page but it does have controller support. Keyboard keys are set by default so make sure to go to the settings (ESC key) then go to Change Keys and and bind your controller buttons.

I've never played the series of this game, and I saw some videos online of the previous installments, and the Amiga version of this game, and I think this is similar in game play. There are a few differences, like this, the Turbografx-16 version, has more faster game play, and is a little less forgiving in avoiding getting hit by enemies. Also, it was developed by NEC, and although as I said before they kept most of the gameplay, you will notice some Japanese influence in the characters in this game (walking cameras, incorrect grammar and a few weird power-ups). Also, this series has some good soundtrack, and this game is no exception as NEC did just about as good a job as British game company Gremlin Interactive. Although some of the stages have almost unfair difficult spots and sometimes easy bosses, this turned out to be a good platform game.

Awful. Controls are dire and the game is just plain bad anyway. This is not a Monty Mole game. It's a terrible platform fighter where nothing makes sense. I mean, I know it's old, but the other Monty games are probably still worth a play, but this? No.

Definitely the best version of Impossamole ever. Blows away the Amiga version, which is the next best version. The music is downright fantastic chip tunes. And it has a complete soundtrack, unlike all the other versions. The Amiga and other versions only have a title screen, high score screen, & maybe an ending theme if I'm remembering right. That's not to say this game is without it's flaws. The hitbox is off, both for Monty & the enemies. That's the main thing that holds the Impossamole games from being better in general. It takes some getting used to. However, I gave it a second chance, & ended up loving this underdog of a game. Also, the graphics in this version are great. Lot's of nice detailed sprites and tiles and huge bosses! However, Gremlin could've done quite a bit more. There's plenty of instances where parallax could've been easily added with some simple tricks using sprites a/or dynamic tiles, as this version was on the TurboGrafx-16 which only has 1 background layer. Still, quite a bit more could've been done to spruce up the graphics more. Also, one of the sound effects that may wear on you, is when you get hit. Especially when it's multiple times in a row, so keep that in mind. In any case, despite some flaws, I really enjoy this game, especially after giving it some time, & being slightly forgiving. Plus, playing the other versions of Impossamole definitely helps in my appreciation of this version.

Impossamole is an ancient Commodore 64/Amiga/Amstrad/Atari ST game from 1990. It's a whopping 33 years old at the time of this review. The game lacks support for any modern gaming display resolutions (or widescreen monitors), hasn't been modernised or updated to run smoothly on modern gaming PCs. Despite this lack of modernisation, it carries a pretty high price tag for such an ancient game. This seems to have been put on Steam as a nostalgia gouge, or just a cash grab to try profit from abandonware. That's the MO for Piko Interactive, robbing graves and trying (pathetically) to gouge gamers for abandoned trashware. And that's not ok... this garbage is polluting Steam, and the prices Piko charges are just insane... they're swindlers at those prices for abandonware. It's not okay! Anyway, about the most important thing, the game! And why you shouldn't buy it (Piko's ethics aside). This is a pretty poor platformer... slightly better graphics than Auf Weidersehen Monty, but that's not saying much. Worse gameplay. You kick and pick up crates to hurt enemies, so there's a brawler aspect, but ultimately this is a pretty shallow experience. Worth remembering that about the same time this game out, the C64 it was designed for was one foot in the grave of obsolesence as dedicated gaming hardware for the x86 PC, too, so it's a pretty interesting era academically. Except even the C64 was churning out hits like King's Bounty, Test Drive 3, and Champions of Krynn. And this retrograde bargain bin reject. It wasn't a good game then. It's so much worse now. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. The game only displays in a bizarre 1:1 aspect ratio. Like... do they own a completely square monitor? Has the developer never seen a computer before? This isn't really acceptable, and it's unclear why the developer couldn't format the game correctly. Another reason to avoid this. Bewilderingly, the game doesn't include proper audio controls, so you can't turn off the annoying background music, you'll need to alt+tab out and stop the music using the Windows sound mixer. This is obviously not okay and it's unclear why the developers chose not to include this basic feature. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. Impossamole is relatively expensive for an abandonware nostalgia gouge, at $9 USD, and it's not worth it. The game is just too old, hasn't been modernised. And as the old saying goes, you can't go home again. Even when it was new, this was never a triple-A game. This is the kind of game that went almost directly from the warehouse into the cheap bargain bins at the front of the shop. Now, on Steam, without any modernisation? This is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $9 asking price for this game could get you games like "Ark: Survival Evolved", "Euro Truck Simulator 2" or "Assetto Corsa". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. There's also thousands of free, superior quality games on Steam. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b] Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]

Only recommend for the biggest Monty Mole fans. Probably the worst of the main 5 games, including Monty Is Innocent. But the price is quite cheap. Buy if you want.

Gelungene NEC PC-Engine Version eines schlechten Spieles. Mit der ESC-Taste kommt ihr ins Menü, in dem sich auch ein Xbox One Controller problemlos kontrollieren läßt. Die PC-Engine und TurboGrafx-16 Version unterscheidet sich von der Amiga und C64 Version, welche über ein anderes Leveldesign verfügt.

Les touches au clavier ont une forte latence, ce qui rend gênant la façon de jouer et empêche donc d'avancer dans ce jeu, ce qui est très perturbant.

Хороший и сложной платформер. Жаль короткий.