Another visitor... stay a while... staaaaay forever!
What does this have to do with Impossible Mission, you ask? Well, it just shows that when things look bad for gamers, an absolute gem can come along and shock everyone with its originality and sheer brilliance, and that's exactly what Impossible Mission is.
The premise of the game isn't exactly original; you are Agent 4125, and your (impossible) mission is to enter the underground lair of Elvin Atombender, a mad genius, and you have just six hours to stop him from launching a nuclear missile attack on the whole world.
What is original however, is the game's design. Elvin has hidden the password that you need throughout 32 randomly-arranged rooms, and just to make it more challenging, he has split the password into 36 pieces and randomly hidden the pieces in furniture all over the place. Oh, and just to make it even tougher, he's also got a small army of robots at his command. To make things even worse, if that's possible, if you touch a robot you are electrocuted and knocked out for 10 minutes. If you are electrocuted by a robot, you're out cold for 10 minutes. If you fall down a pit, you guessed it, that's another 10 minutes gone. You may have unlimited lives in a manner of speaking, but you don't have unlimited time. Just to remind you of that fact, Elvin lets you know when another hour has passed. The next time you enter a room, he'll order his robots to destroy you! The good news is that some of the robots are dumb, REALLY dumb. They'll just stand there and let you search furniture all day long. You can even jump over them and all they will do is turn around and watch you. The bad news is that some of the robots are smart, VERY smart! They can follow you, even if you're not on the same floor. They can keep turning around to check that you're not trying to sneak past them, and if they spot you they'll turn around and try to electrocute you. They will move slowly until they spot you, then they will attack so quickly that you don't have time to get away from them. The sneaky robots can also chase you, then wait until they get to the end of the platform before trying to zap you. There's also a floating robotic ball that will follow you around the screen that will knock you out on contact. Luckily, that's easily dealt with by guiding it into one of the other robots, at which point it disappears until you leave and re-enter the room.
In short, you never know exactly what's waiting for you until you enter the room. While there's the same number of robots in each room every time you play, they'll behave differently; this means that you'll have to change strategies as you go, adding another level of challenge.
As for the rooms themselves, they vary in difficulty. Some are ridiculously easy, so much so that even a novice gamer will be able to search everything without any trouble. Conversely, other rooms are fiendishly difficult, and will lose you lots of time while you try to get to that last piece of furniture without being zapped. Luckily, help is at hand. While searching the furniture, you may also find password to reset any lifts that are in the room, or even a password that will disable the robots for a short amount of time, giving you a chance to search the furniture without fear of being attacked. This, if anything, adds to the fun as you frantically try to search for password pieces before the nearby robot wakes up and attacks. It's a simple, yet brilliant touch that adds a further sense of urgency to the game.
If you run out of reset and disable passwords, not to worry! Two of the rooms give you a chance to earn more by playing a minigame; all you have to do is hit a series of musical squares in ascending order. There is, as you'd expect, a small catch. Every time you complete a puzzle, the computer will add another note to the next one.
Once you have collected enough password pieces, you can start to put the pieces back together to find the password. This is done by rotating them and changing their color, then combining four of them to make a complete puzzle piece. Once you have put all nine pieces back together, you can go and confront Atombender and stop the attack. Help is on hand if you're having trouble putting the pieces back together, but it costs time.
Graphics:
Agent 4125's smooth animation still looks great today. The rest of the graphics are crisp and functional. Sound: "Destwoy him, my wobots!" Electronic Speech Systems did an amazing job here. Elvin taunts you as time ticks away and Agent 4125 screams when he falls to his death, it adds a lot to the game's atmosphere.
Gameplay: 9
This is one game where you can only blame yourself if something goes wrong. It's harsh at times, but that's the nature of the beast. While luck plays a part in the kind of robots you face, every room is beatable. On top of all that, there's a couple of minigames in there, in the form of a puzzle game and a memory game.
Value: 9
The random nature of the rooms and the robots you're up against makes this game good for replay after replay, even after you've beaten it. It's one of the few games that I still play from that era, and I enjoy it as much now as I did back then.
Overall:
It's one of the all-time greats. If you haven't played Impossible Mission, I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you have a couple of hours to kill and you've got a soft spot for old-school gaming, it's well worth your time.