Impossamole

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Monty Mole has come out of retirement, but once again he longed for the excitement of adventure, as a passing alien spaceship decided to beam him up for a new mission. Apparently the Aliens' sacred scrolls of eternal life have been stolen by five Guardians. Each of these is hiding at the end of five levels, ranging from the homely mines of the Klondike to the mysterious Orient. Each level comprises several layered horizontally scrolling sections linked by chasms, ropes, and ladders. Of course they are also inhabited by plenty of evil minions and a variety of deadly traps based on the each levels' landscape, which reduce Monty's energy on contact easier than...expected! Combat involves either Monty using his super powers to kick his aggressors to oblivion or hitting his enemies with bombs and guns collected along the way. But...the weapons are far less effective than you might expect! Of course Monty's health can be restored by picking up food (worms...and ice creams!) around the levels. Also be on the look-out for jewels, lumps of gold and coins as occasionally you'll meet a shopkeeper along the way.
What is really interesting is that, the first four levels can be attempted in any order, but all four must be completed to allow access to the final one. Impossamole is a rather ridiculously difficult platfomer, as Monty's health is easily reduced. I found it impossible to get very far, just one mistake can cost a huge amount of energy and with only one-life (!) things can get more than a bit frustrating... Overall, a nice effort, a cute character and some passable gameplay here.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
Ok, the platform-and-ladders action isn't exactly innovative, although there are some nice touches with each level having appropriate nasties and features, e.g. snowman, huge rolling snowballs and cable cars in the Ice World level. Same as with the Amiga version, the Atari ST game is equally tough and nothing special to look at with typically cutesy sprites gracing adequate backdrops and a total of 16 colors on screen. Especially the backdrops look quite "empty" in detail at times, though there are the occasional perspective changes in the form of trees and spears (e.g. in the Amazon world) going behind then in front of you. Jolly staff but nothing to get excited over. In general, the graphics are not up to the Rick Dangerous standards.
The sound offers a rather memorable introductory tune, which is some of my best liking. Unfortunately you may choose only between sound effects or music during gameplay, though I do prefer the music here as the effects are rather basic in the ST version (in contrast to the Amiga version which offers some high quality samples here).