Impossible Mission

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

Haunted House

This is another game that I never really played through as a kid. A friend of mine had the game but I never spent enough time over there to really get into it.  It always looked cool, though, and I really wanted to give a try.  This time, I tried to just jump right in and give it a go, but I was totally lost and died a whole bunch of times.  It wasn't until I found a copy of the manual and read through it that I figured out how it's supposed to work.

As with most Atari adventure games, the main goal is to collect three pieces of an item.  In Superman it was a bridge, in E.T. it was the phone and this time it's an urn.  The pieces are spread around a mansion with 4 floors and 6 rooms per floor.  Trying to stop you are a tarantula, a bat and a ghost.  There is also a key that will let you through any door and a rod which will make you immune to the creatures.  The goal is to collect the urn and return it to the front doors and exit the house.

Sounds easy, right?  At the easier levels it is.  The game has 9 difficulty levels which progress as follows:

• Level 1 - The walls are lit up, there are no locked doors and there are three creatures.
• Level 2 - Walls are dark, no locked doors, three creatures
• Level 3 - Like 2 except: Some doors are locked but the key is in the first room.
• Level 4 - Like 3 except: Random key placement.
• Level 5 - Like 4 except: 3 spiders giving a total of 5 creatures.
• Level 6 - Like 5 except: All 5 creatures chase you from room to room, ghost can pass through locked doors.
• Level 7 - If you're touched by the bat, you drop your item and it moves somewhere random in the mansion.
• Level 8 - Like 7 except: Creatures are faster and ghost is immune to the rod.
• Level 9 - Like 8 except: New House layout and all 5 creatures pass through locked doors. 

Though you're given 9 lives in which to accomplish the goal, I decided that "beating the game" would mean defeating each difficulty level without dying.  This ended up being substantially harder than I thought it would.  Screenshots of this game really don't do it justice.  They just show a pair of eyes in a dark room, but the game is actually pretty tense.  Especially when you have the urn completed and you're carefully opening doors and hoping there are no creatures in the next room.  There were a couple of times that I got to the ground floor and just decided to run like hell for the exit.  The one thing that would be an improvement to this game would be a final difficulty level that would be just like Level 9 but where the locked doors are random.  I can imagine that this might cause problems or even impossible games (i.e. the key is locked inside a room) but I imagine you could write an algorithm to ensure the game is solvable before starting it.

I knew from my limited experience with the game as a kid that it was fun, but now that I've had the chance to sit down and really get to know it, I have to say that it's now one of my favorite games for the Atari 2600.  Highly recommended.

Searching the spooky old house.	AAA!  A ghost!
AAA!  A tarantula!	Making a getaway with the urn.

Superman

Another game from 1979 and one of my earliest gaming memories.  It's not a great game, but I remember it being kinda fun.  At the beginning of the game, Lex Luthor blows up a bridge in Metropolis.  The idea then is to collect the three parts of the bridge to rebuild it and catch Luthor and his four henchmen and put them back in jail.  Making this more difficult are 3 kryptonite satellites which will keep you from flying or picking up items.  If you're touched by one then you must kiss Lois Lane, who is also wandering around, in order to regain your powers.  Random, huh?

After playing through the game once I managed to finish in 611 seconds, just over 10 minutes.  I figured, if I can get it done in half the time, 300 seconds, I would consider the game "completed".

After finishing the game a few times, I was able to complete my goal, however, it felt a little too easy.  After playing with the difficulty settings however, I found something that made it feel more satisfying.  When the "B" difficulty setting is changed Lois no longer appears near you when the satellites touch you.  Having to walk around the game looking for Lois turns a minor inconvenience into a major annoyance.

Soaring over Metropolis!

Luthor is escaping!

It took a few more playthroughs to really start to get a grasp on what the map looked like.  I found that the subway screen with the pink background was right next to the jail.  And the bridge location was down one screen and left one screen from the jail.  After figuring out a few more shortcuts like this and having a lucky break with the satellites I was finally able to beat the game again at less than 300 seconds.  My new record, 250 seconds.

 

Lois and Clark

Level complete!

Overall, the game is a bit repetitive and I can't see a lot of replay value once you've done it in as short an amount of time as you're willing to call "done".  It's fun to play a few times, but I'm pretty much done with it.  Thanks for all the happy memories Superman, it's time to retire you.

Adventure!

Let's get this thing started!  I decided to compile a master list of all the games I've played and always wanted to play.  It's a huge list and I'm going to start working my way through it from oldest to newest.

My gaming history began with the Atari 2600.  I was probably about 6 when we got one and I had probably a dozen or so games. Some of them were good, some were terrible and then there was this one, Adventure!

Let me take one second to mention how much I LOVE the old Atari box art.  There is something incredibly cool about it that I can't put my finger on... I'll try to figure it out before I exhaust my Atari playthroughs.

There are 3 difficulty levels to this game, level 1 is the easiest version with only 2 dragons, 2 castles and everything is easy to find.  Level 2 gives the full game with all three dragons, all three castles, invisible labyrinths and the Bat.  You could probably call level 2 the "official, complete game".  Level 3 takes things a bit further and gives you the complete game, but randomizes the location of all the objects.  I'm not sure if that means that there's a possibility of impossible combinations, i.e. the white key inside the white castle, etc.). But it adds a ton of replayability to the game.

I decided that "officially completing" this game would entail beating the game once each on levels 1 and 2 and 5 times on level 3.

I have to say, level 1 was a breeze, but level 2 was harder than I thought it would be.  The stupid Bat kept switching things around on me.  One time he stole my sword, leaving me a live dragon and another time he stole my bridge leaving me trapped in a wall.  There was, of course, a lot of getting eaten by dragons.


Overall, I loved playing this game again.  It didn't take long to get the hang of it, but the randomness of the hardest difficulty made it a lot of fun.  There were several times that I was being chased around the screens by two or three dragons and I was desperately looking for the sword.  So much fun!

Starting my quest!	AAA!  Don't eat me!
That's one dead duck, uh, dragon.	The forbidding, black castle.