In a cold night, many holes and sprites occur near Snowboy-Mace's garden. Mace actively fight them. But can he win? Come on Mace!

This is one of the more interesting, and definitely better-made Gamate games I've come across (they didn't even steal the tetris font!). Even the concept is somewhat original (I think) - it's a bit like a cross between Snow Bros and Sokoban. You can shoot snowballs at enemies to them into... bigger snowballs, then you have to carry them to fill holes around the levels. If an enemy in snowball form touches another, it becomes de-snowballed, which means you're pretty fucked if you're carrying it (you're also pretty fucked if two enemies start following each other around and manage to corner you, for that matter). Later levels feature a few different enemies, including a slug-ish thing which does not appreciate being turned into a snowball, and will give chase if you try to engage it in any such shenanigans. There are a few powerups scattered around, which do things like speeding you up and freezing all the enemies, and you can walk on the walls in some places for no apparent reason. I'd say it was a glitch, but it happens in the attract mode as well.

There's at least one bonus minigame type thing. I wasn't expecting it at all, it just appeared after level 5 with all its space invaderishness, which was pretty awesome. The old Bit Corp would have made an entire game out of that. Unfortunately I couldn't get a screenshot, because you can't pause, but it's basically just a space invaders game using Snowman Legend graphics.

In summary, don't tease the slug.

Scans

(click for hi-res versions)

additional pics: italian box / english box + card (from ebay)