Monty Mole in a cavern as shown in the C64 version.
The player controls Monty as he travels around Europe collecting money in order to buy a Greek island - Montos, where he can safely retire.[1] Gameplay is in the style of a flick-screen platform game, similar to many such games of the 1980s such as Technician Ted and Jet Set Willy. Some screens (such as those representing the Eiffel Tower and the Pyrenees) bear some relation to their real-life counterparts but most are just typical platform game screens.
Auf Wiedersehen Monty contains many features and peculiarities for the player to discover. Examples include being suddenly attacked by a bull's head in Spain after collecting a red cape (presumably a reference to bullfighting), a car being dropped in one of two places on entering a screen representing Düsseldorf in West Germany, a chef's hat found in Sweden (a reference to the Swedish Chef of Muppets fame; also, the two rooms representing Sweden are subtitled Bjorn and Borg), and a record in Luxembourg that when collected makes Monty breakdance to the game's title music (this may be a reference to Radio Luxembourg).[2]
It is possible to get to areas of the game more quickly by flying from an airport using air tickets which can be collected throughout the game. Some parts of the game can only be reached in this manner.
As well as money, there are other miscellaneous objects to collect in the game for points. This was important as the player needs a certain number of points to get to Montos. These are often particular to the country Monty is visiting (such as berets in France). Bottles of wine or a glass of beer in West Germany cause Monty to briefly become drunk and his control to become slightly erratic leading to a reversal of controls, repeated jumping or Monty climbing any ladders or drainpipes he encounters.
The game won the award for best platform game of the year according to the readers of Crash magazine.[4]
The game was voted number 57 in the Your Sinclair Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time.[5]
Trivia
The game screens are laid out geographically, with the complete map of the game corresponding to a map of Europe.
The money that Monty collects are labeled "EC", the European Currency Unit, one decade before the euro was introduced, but in that era, there were already talks about an unified currency in Europe. Back in that day, the currency had the tentative name of ECU.
The title was inspired by the then-popular television series, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
Sequels
Moley Christmas was released later in the same year. A further Monty Mole game, called Impossamole was released in 1990. It took a different form to the previous games being more of a "console-style" arcade game.
