Impossible Mission
Published in 1984, this is a title that slipped under my radar at the time. All I knew going into it was that it was some kind of platformer where you play a spy infiltrating the underground base of an evil genius.
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| NOT Mission Impossible! |
That brief description really doesn't do this game justice though. Yes, it's a platformer, but it's also a Rogue-like, and an adventure game, and a puzzle game. I'll try to explain. As I mentioned, you are a spy infiltrating the underground base of an evil genius. You start in an elevator and, at each stop, you move left or right to enter a room. Each room contains several elements. First are the robots. They guard the rooms in the underground base and behave according to several scripts. Some stand in place, some move back and forth repeatedly and some follow your movement. Additionally, any of the above can come equipped with death-rays. These shoot out a short distance in front of the robots. The robots are guarding, loosely, the several pieces of furniture scattered around on various platforms around the room. You must search this furniture to find puzzle pieces that combine to create the master password or codes to disable the robots or move some of the lifts in the room.
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| Death ray |
Each room appears to be generated somewhat randomly and can contains any of several layouts along with random placement of furniture and robots with random scripts. Occasionally, this can create layouts that are all but impossible without the robot disable codes. This makes the game something of a rogue-like, where the rooms are procedurally generated and each game is unique. Your only weapons are those codes and the ability to jump. Beyond that, you have no offensive capability.
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| Searching the furniture, not peeing on it. |
Once you've collected the puzzle pieces (all 36 of them) you can begin combining them into the master password. You have to figure out which pieces combine to make a punchcard, 4 to a card, 1 letter per card, making a 9-letter word. The pieces can be horizontally and/or vertically flipped as well as colored any of 4 colors. This makes the puzzle almost as difficult as the rest of the game, if not more so. Once you've solved the puzzle you can enter the evil genius' room to complete the game.
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| Stay a while... stay FOREVER!! |
Technically, you have 6 hours to complete the game. The clock counts down in real time. However, each time you die, either to robots or falling, you lose 10 minutes. Each time you use a hint in the puzzle mode, you lose 2 minutes. I would guess that you could complete the exploration part of the game, if you made no mistakes, in about 20-30 minutes. Allowing another 10-20 minutes for the puzzle (again, I'm being generous here), you could complete the game in about an hour. The other 5 hours allow for about 30 lives lost. Of course, you probably won't complete the game with no errors, so this number is, realistically, a lot less.
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| Out of time... fail. |
My first few playthroughs (okay more than a few) ended with me simply dying too much. Never even explored the whole base. Eventually, I was able to collect all the puzzle pieces but I ran out of time at least twice. Finally, I was able to gather the pieces, put the puzzle together and finish the game with time to spare. I felt, justifiably, proud. This game is hard.
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| Did it!! |
Overall, this game was surprisingly, quite good. Yes, the graphics are a bit dated and the voice synthesis, while novel at the time, is pretty cheesy now. But, the controls, once you get used to them, are very responsive, the randomness of the rooms gives it quite a lot of replay value, and the variety of gameplay (platforming, puzzle solving, etc), though sometimes ridiculously hard, keeps things fresh. I don't think that I'll be coming back to play it again anytime soon, but I'd rather play this than Lode Runner and I'm really glad I played it. It's definitely one of the better early platforms and, if it's already on your list, give it a try. Don't feel bad if you can't solve the end puzzle though...
