Moley Christmas

Batty had shaken the other magazines into action, but Moley Christmas really showed them who were the kings of the cover tapes. By this time, the "final" Monty game had been released, and many thought he'd never return, but good old YS came up with the goods by getting Gremlin to do this game-ette for them.
    Monty Mole safely legged it from Intermole in Auf Wiedersehen Monty, and is now sunning himself with his Molettes on some sunny desert island away from suburbia as you read this (let's try and forget Impossamole ever happened, shall we?). But Monty's only human (let's try and forget he's a mole, shall we?), and misses YS so much that he wants to do a one-off job for them. So, off he goes, back to old Blightly and nurses into production this mini Monty Mole game from those good chaps at Gremlin (let's forget that Monty's actually a mole, sha(Snip! Ed.).
    This isn't a full-scale Monty game, far from it. All puzzles, such as they are, are restricted to one screen in a six screen game. There's no real difficulty in solving them, just lots of trial and error as you start your task in Gremlin's offices (and try not to be too absorbed by the secretaries' pendulous extremities) and help turn the code into programs, put programs onto tapes, tapes onto magazines, and finally magazines into shops.
    I actually think that this was originally going to be a Christmas card that Gremlin was going to send to the Speccy mags for Christmas 1987 before someone had the idea of turning it into a cover game and making some money out of it in the process. The end sequence certainly smacks of it, as does the simplicity of the game. That's not to say that the game is cheap-looking. No way. The graphics are clear and in the usual Monty style (again, let's ignore Impossamole...), plenty of humour thrown in, very nice tune in 128k mode, and all in all a sweet little game. Wouldn't have lasted ten seconds had it been sold at full price mind, but then it was never meant to have done.

*YS Cross-references*
	Moley Christmas/Your Sinclair	YS24	NEWS
	Moley Christmas/Your Sinclair	YS27	NEWS
**Some info from Sinclair Infoseek+SPOTON***