Monty Python's Flying Circus: The Computer Game. (Evaluation)
by Alfred C. Giovetti

Turn the clock back to 1969 and relive the television comedy show that went on to become an international hit and cult classic. Monty Python's Flying Circus: The Computer Game uses the animation and humor of the Monty Python troupe to produce a very silly arcade computer game and even funnier documentation.

The plot sickens as your alter ego, a gumby (the English worker lampooned by Monty Python), loses four pieces of his brain, which merily hop away. You pursue the brain pieces as a gumby, a fish with a human head, a foot that behaves like a pogo stick, and a bird. In a trip through a landscape inspired by trouper Terry Gilliam, you collect eggs, sausage, beans, and Spam. You're not completely defenseless. You can pilot your gumby around exploding kittens and upper-class twits or throw fish at them to uncover the objects mentioned above and destroy cheese, which also removes points from your score.

Your score starts at 99,999,999 points, and you lose points as you play the game. For every 10,000,000 lost points, you get another life. Throwing fish at silly places also causes you to lose points. If you lose enough points, you'll obtain nine lives, which will regenerate indefinitely, making your gumby invincible.

There's no save-game feature, and non-IBM versions have on-disk copy protection that may damage the disk if you attempt to copy it. Having to identify smelly cheeses from the documentation is an additional and appropriate copy-protection scheme.

The Official Hungarian Phrase Bokk [sic] comes with the game and is composed of 44 pages of hilarious Monty Python-like humor, some of which is copied from the original show. The book is much better than the game itself.

The game is quite difficult, with nothing distinctive beyond the Monty Python theme. It makes me wonder why there's no infinite lives switch for us Monty Python fans over 30 who wish to wax nostalgic but who don't have the arcade reflexes of a 12-year-old.