Posted by Devin de Gruyl on May 9th, 2007
“Another visitor… Stay awhile, stay forever!”
Right from the moment your Commodore 64 first spoke those words to you, you knew you were in for a decidedly different kind of gaming experience. In 1984, computers simply did not talk to you — at least not without expensive hardware add-ons. It was like your C64 had been temporarily possessed by the spirit of HAL-9000.
Thus began your Impossible Mission - probably one of the most unique and genre-defying games of its generation, and one that’s fondly recalled today as one of the C64’s crowning achievements.
Here’s the deal. You, a top-notch secret agent, have just entered the secret underground lair of Elvin Atombender, a very naughty mad scientist in the James Bond vein, who’s threatened to blow up the world if he doesn’t get what he wants. (Why does it never occur to these megalomaniac types that blowing up the world will very likely take them with it? Then again, I guess that’s why they’re called mad scientists…) You have exactly that long to explore Elvin’s fortress, avoid sentry robots, collect puzzle pieces, and unlock the door to his chamber.
Sounds easy, right? Weeelllll… maybe not so much.
First of all, there are a couple dozen different types of rooms, each one with its own robotic security system. Worse, your brilliant superiors have sent you on this sensitive mission without so much as a cap pistol; you can only jump out of the way of charging robots and their lasers. Also, while you have theoretically unlimited lives, each time you die ten minutes gets shaved off of the game clock, taking you that much closer to Armageddon. Wonderful.
Oh yes, did I mention that the layout of Elvin’s lair changes each time you play, so making a map is pointless?
To find Elvin, you must obtain puzzle pieces that are hidden in the furniture of each room. To search an object, press and hold Up on the joystick when standing in front of it. Just watch out for any patrolling robots…
Fortunately, Elvin’s left some passwords carelessly laying around. With these passwords you can temporarily turn off the robots in a given room, or reset the elevator platforms if you’ve gotten them into an inaccessible position. You can find these in the same manner as the puzzle pieces, or by playing a Simon-like game with special computer terminals in two rooms.
The puzzle pieces themselves are almost a game unto their own. There are 36 of them in all, eight puzzles of four pieces each. Some pieces could fit in more than one puzzle, plus there are four possible positions each piece could be arranged in and three different colors, for a total of 432 possibilities! You can get correct piece arrangements using your handheld computer’s built-in modem, but each time you do this it eats up valuable time, so use it sparingly!
The ultimate goal is to reach the room depicted below. The big blue thing on the lowest level is where Elvin is hiding. After solving each of the eight individual puzzles, you get one letter in the eight-digit password that locks this door. Come back here with the complete password, press Up, and you’ve won.
Impossible Mission, as you can see, spans several different genres in a single game — it’s equal parts platformer, puzzler, and adventurer. This should dispel the myth that early computer games were necessarily simplistic and lacking depth. Truth told, there is probably more playability in this twenty-plus year old game than in most of what you’ll find on the shelves of EB Games or Best Buy today! The randomness factor, where each game gives you a different layout of rooms and you never quite know what the robots will do until you actually get within line-of-sight with them, gives it an almost Roguelike-style replay factor… even after you’ve beaten it, you can go back and play it again indefinitely, confident that each time through will be just as challenging as your first.
Overall, if you’re in the mood for a challenging game that appeals to your action-gaming and puzzle-solving sensibilities, Impossible Mission is definitely for you. Play it now, you’ll be glad you did.
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