Impossible Mission - 1984
Impossible Mission
C64 - 1984 - Platformer/Puzzle
Impossible Mission is probably my favorite game on the platform, and one I played the shit out of as a kid despite not knowing how to really beat the game. Still a lot of fun, and I really love the environment.
In this game, you play as a secret agent who must stop a madman from hacking into defense computers and launching a nuclear warhead [at least I think that's what the plot is, wikipedia is a little more vague on it but this is what I recall]. You do this by finding keycards by searching furniture and other objects in the game, and once you've got a full set of keycards, you can gain access to the final control room and win the game. The trick here is, the keycards are in pieces - 4 pieces to a keycard. You need to assemble the pieces in order to create complete keycards. They come in different colors and sometimes rotated/flipped, so you need to manipulate the card pieces you find to fit together and create the final keycard. There are a total of 36 pieces, which make 9 keycards.
There are no lives in the game; instead, you have "6 hours" to finish the game, and each death costs you 10 minutes. You can die in two ways - falling in holes [which plays the best digital voice sample ever made], and getting electrocuted by robots. Oh, did I forget to mention? Yeah, the entire game is filled with lightning-slinging security robots and the occasional ominous black orb of death which will kill you if it touches you [and it will try]. The robots have varying patterns and behaviors, and you'll need to work around them to search the rooms for keycard pieces. Thankfully, you can jump over the security robots [provided they don't zap you first] and the ominous black death orbs can usually be avoided easily. Also, sometimes instead of keycards you find codes which disable robots [also ones which reset room platforms, which is handy] - you can use these codes in computer terminals located in some rooms.
Something I really love about the game is that its layout is randomized. The game has a series of long elevator shafts with rooms coming off of them, and the layout is totally randomized each time you play. Room designs get reused, but their locations [and the locations of puzzle pieces/codes] get randomized too. The location of the control room is random as well.
Another neat thing Impossible Mission has is music rooms. These are rooms which contain a large grid of white and black blocks, and when you enter the room, a series of notes is played as the blocks light up. You then need to play those notes back by clicking the right squares, in ascending order of low note to high note. If you do, you'll get lift/robot disabling codes. I've also always loved going into an otherwise empty room and all of a sudden one of those ominous black death orbs starts to descend from above and chase me, making me have to figure out some way to trick it into getting stuck somewhere so I can escape. Pretty neat.
I really can't recommend this game enough. The C64 version is the best I've played, and I think I've played them all by now. The sound design is excellent - from the humming and other noises from the robots, to the sound of the player's footsteps as he runs through the levels, to the digitized voices sprinkled throughout, it's just great. The randomization makes for great replayability, and the variance in robot AI and placement means there are some tense moments searching then trying to hurry away before you're caught.
Great game. :D
