Impossible Mission

From C64-Wiki

Impossible Mission

Game No.	2
Developer	Dennis Caswell, Electronic Speech Systems
Company	Epyx
Publisher	Epyx
Musician
HVSC-File	/GAMES/G-L/Impossible_Mission.sid
Release	1984
Platform	Acorn Electron, Apple II, Atari 7800, BBC Micro, C64, Schneider CPC, Sega Master System, Sinclair ZX Spectrum
Genre	Arcade, Platformer (Multi Screen)
Gamemode	Single player
Operation
Media
Language
Information	Successor: Impossible Mission II Impossible Mission 2025

[edit] Voting

Voting of the C64-Wiki-User (10=the best Vote):
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C64Games	10	26th August 2009 - "Highlight" 19753 downs
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Gamebase64	10	"Classic!"
ZZap64	95%	Edition 87/05

[edit] Description

The situation: for three days have the strategic central computers of the great powers acted up. An unknown person manipulates their programmes; at the end of these programmes is the starting command for the intercontinental rocket. The countdown is on, only 6 hours keep the humanity from an atomic inferno. An unknown person? Only professor Elvin, the insane computer expert could crack the top secret start code, Elvin, who entrenches himself in his intangible subterraneous, guarded by 90 murderous robots, that until now had hunted down every intruder. No one who has ever set foot on the lift to Elvins cave labyrinth has returned back alive.

The last hope: Special Agent 4125, the most cunning, toughest and most indiscriminate man, that the secret service can offer. Only ice cold reckoning and superior physical condition give him a tiny chance to avert the disaster in the last minute.

The game: Your task is to put a stop to evil Elvin Atombender's game. For this you have to enter each of the rooms in the game and examine all subjects found there, trying to find pieces of puzzles, of which the password is composed of. There are nine puzzles in total, each consisting of four pieces. The display at the bottom of the screen is your pocket computer, displaying which rooms and tunnels you have been to so far. When you are in an elevator or in one of the aisles, you can press your joystick button to activate more functions of your pocket computer. These are self-explanatory by their pictograms.

As soon as you fit all pieces of all the puzzles and with this found the password needed to enter Elvin's laboratory, you need to stand in front of the door of the control room, which is located in one of the blue rooms and push the joystick forward. The door will open and you rescued the world – winning the game.

[edit] Design

... an animation from the game ...

... a "walk around the house" ...

The game consists of different screens that are accessed over aisles. Only when going up and down with the lift a vertical scrolling is used. Speech output can be heard several times, that is when Elvin comments for intimidation (at the beginning of the game: "I have another visitor. Stay a while, stay forever...") or instructs his robots in a room ("Destroy him my robots..."). The voice is well imitated from an old professor. The player's character screams realistically, when falling into the abyss. Sounds are mainly produced by the robots, basic operating noise and the shooting of the laser beams provide a considerable soundscape. The lift makes an appropriate sound when going up and down. When using the modem you can hear dialing sounds and when fitting puzzle parts in the pocket computer you will hear peeping sounds. It is important to mention the sounds, that are played in the two special rooms with the big "chess field" and which need to be clicked in the order of the tone pitch. The sprites are designed realistically, the main character as well as the robots and the furnishings. The course of movements of the character are precise, so that it is necessary to choose an exact starting position for an accurate jump to reach some of the furniture.

[edit] Hints

[edit] Controls in aisles and rooms

Joystick left/right: character walks left and right
Joystick up/down: moves the lift and the platforms in the rooms;
Joystick up: search items; at a computer you can look at the menu with up and then with up/down and fire choose the desired option.
Fire button (in the aisle in combination with each direction): character jumps

At the computer terminals in the rooms you can switch off the robots for a limited time and -if possible- reset the platforms to the initial position. To use this option you need passwords, that you can

find just as the puzzle pieces hidden in furniture and other items

receive by sorting the tones in ascending order in the special "chessboard" rooms (details see below)

[edit] Controlling the pocket computer

... the pocket computer (one punchcard put together)

To call it up press the fire button when you are in an aisle or in the lift.

You move the hand with the joystick in the desired direction. By pressing fire you choose or drop a piece and operate the buttons on the left and right side.

At the far left there are two arrows and a keypad. By using the keypad you get into the modem menu, over which you can ask if enough puzzle pieces are collected to solve one part of the puzzle. The other button is to correct the orientation of the puzzle pieces. In the black area (work space) on the left you see all puzzle pieces that you have collected until now. These are placed vertically and can be scrolled up and down by using the arrows. By clicking on one piece a copy is made which can be placed on one of the four fields of the work space. The chosen puzzle piece (shaded) can be changed by the buttons on the right side:

Change colour (green, yellow, turquoise) with the lower row of buttons
Turn: horizontally by the button on the upper left, vertically by the button in the upper middle
A change can be reversed by using the middle button in the middle row (exclamation mark)
Deleted with the button on the upper right (trash bin)

Other functions:

Pause mode with the button on the far right in the middle row (paws)
You leave the pocket computer by the left button in the middle row ("Off")

To fully solve the puzzle and with it receive the password, you need to have altogether 36 puzzle pieces. The 4 used pieces per letter disappear from the inventory when placed together correctly.

In the lower line you can see the special pieces for the manipulation of the robots (snoozes) and the platforms (lift inits) you have collected until now, and below that the already solved parts of the password and the current time (starts with 12:00:00).

The put 4 puzzle pieces correctly together they need to have the same colour. The colour they get depends on the colour of the room you find it in. It is advisable to create noticable patterns with 2 parts, whose counterpart is most of the time easier to put together (subjective view). Generally is is time saving to search for all puzzle pieces before you start to make combinations (so you can be sure that you have enough parts for the solution without having to use the modem all the time).

[edit] Further information

... the computer terminal with the chessboard pattern

Instead of a fixed number of "lives" you have a time limit (6 hours), to solve the game. When you die, you lose 10 minutes of this time. The use of the modem costs 2 minutes.

In two rooms you can find a computer terminal with a giant screen with a chess board pattern. When operating the computer, it plays a tone sequence, which need to be replayed in ascending tone pitch. On success you receive a password (for lifts and robots, no puzzle pieces). The more often you have elicited a password from the computer, the longer the tone sequence gets (I think I remember right, that every computer has a separate counter for the current level of difficulty). If you want to stop, you can leave the computer by clicking on the purple bar below the chess board.

With Restore you abort the current game and start a new one.

[edit] Versionsinfo

There was an original NTSC version and later an original PAL version.

The differences: In the NTSC version you get zapped, if you play it on a PAL C64 and a robot shoots into the left wall. In the ending sequence seen on a PAL C64 there are slight graphic mistakes. The later released PAL version was changed, so that the robots do NOT shoot at the left wall any more. The graphic bugs in the end sequence were fixed.

[edit] Solution

The puzzle and the punchcards

Overview over punchcards for password "ARTICHOKE" (neutral in colour)

A puzzle put together should look like this: the fragments need to have the same colour. Furthermore they need to fit exactly (not overlap). Here you have the problem that you can fit two pieces together which do not belong together but which also do not overlap. In this case you just won't find any fitting piece for the gap that is left. At the end you will have a rectangular punchcard as a result. The image above depicts a green, almost complete punchcard in the pocket computer in the upper right - only for the lower right corner of this card a piece is missing ("big" black patch). The small black dots are the wanted holes of the punchcard and are not filled. With the found pices the orientation is not known; so you can turn them vertically or horizontally. You can also let this be done automatically over the modem connection (will cost 2 minutes of your time per every 2 puzzle pieces). The image at the right shows an overview of 9 punchcards. But there are more than 9 punchcards from which for each game 9 are chosen. Of course you need to consider, that each punchcard (and each fragment) can be oriented in 4 directions (and have 3 different colours - depending on the room the piece is found in). This makes with 36 punchcard fragments 432 punchcard fragment variations. The chosen puzzle pieces could have a connection to the password (of which there are eight "ARTICHOKE", "CROCODILE", "CORMORANT", "SWORDFISH", "ASPARAGUS", "ALLIGATOR", "ALBATROSS", "BUTTERFLY"). To get a complete overview over all puzzle pieces you would have to generate every password once and then copy out all the puzzle pieces. Sounds like a damn lot of work...

The robots

Even though the robots may all look alike (except the ball shaped one), there are many that significantly differ in their behaviour: there are shooting and not-shooting robots, the ones that move around or stand still on one place, with reaction to the player and without, some already react to the player as soon as he enters the room, others only when you get onto their floor and as long as they can see you.

These different behaviours are newly shared out at every start of a game (position and number of robots in the rooms stay the same). This necessarily has effects: a certain room in which you could search all objects relatively undisturbed, might after a new start be much harder to do by the newly "programmed" robots. In the worst case the robots need to be deactivated over the computer to be able to search all objects without harm.

In six rooms there is the black ball robot. As soon as the player enters such a room, the ball will start to follow him to destroy him. You can use this - rather predictable - behaviour and lure the ball into the reach of a robot. The ball will be destroyed as soon as it touches the robot. An exception is the black ball robot that flies in the shape of an "eight", in this case you can only be helped with avoiding it skillfully.

[edit] Cheats

The version by "Remember" offers next to some cheats (unlimited time, unlimited freeezing of robots and setting back of the lifts, shorten the searching, switch off collisions with robots, view end sequence) also the fix that the NTSC version also works on a PAL C64 without "zap bug".

[edit] Critics

Sledgie: „Very nice arcade game from the early years of the C64-games. It's just fun to play and combines several types of games (jump'n run, puzzling, logics). The rooms and puzzles are arranged randomly every time you start a new game, it is very diversified. But partly very hard to play.“

Guybrush: „Nice challenge with a very high frust-factor when one planlessly collecting parts, finding nothing and getting busted every time!“

TheKills: „A game I despaired at with 8-9 years. It was for me just like the title said...but I used to play it over and over again. 9 points for this one.“

Borna: „Optically the best game around for that time. Additionally, a well done mix of skill and puzzling. If one collects enough passwords at the beginning, it IS solveable. 10 points from me.“

Klaws: "A rather difficult game, that you above all have to play through in one go, as you cannot save the score. Graphics and sound are kept rather sober and clear, which serves as an advantage for the game. Loving details as the "search bar" makes it a game clearly beyond the usual standard."

Goondoc: "A master piece of those times. And furthermore one of (if not the...) the games with the longest playing time. From a time when the most games started again after 3 levels. The perfectly animated protagonist of the game was also unique and was recycled by Epxy in further games. (Summer Games / Winter Games) And even today the words of Elvin Atombender echo in the back of my head: Another Visitor....stay a while.....staaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy forever!"

Shakermaker303: "Difficult game, created for the ambitious gamer. Very diversified, with relatively good graphics and nice speech samples. Since I have plunged into an abyss with the character for the first time and heard the yell, I know that also computer creatures feel fright and pains. 9/10"

Robotron2084: "This is the game, which owners of other home computers always begruded us at that time. Game design in absolute perfection. 10 out of 10 points!"

Retro-Schulzi: "This way you can easily turn night into day in front of the breadbox. Except of a few handling deficits an absolute must! 9 out of 10 points!"

Fulgore: "I've played it very often for unnumerable hours but to my shame I have to admit that I have never played it through successfully. However, one of the highlights in my C64 top ten list - therefore full 10 points!"

Mysticus: "An absolute high-class game, speech output and the complete idea is unexcelled for the C64. The game belongs definitely to my top 3 games. 10 out of 10 points."

Blubarju: "An absolute highlight! Everything fits here. From graphics over sound to controls. Clear 10 points from me."

AR: "My brother could play the game so well in the past, that he could complete it without losing even one life. But the game has also a small bug: sometimes it can happen that a robot energizes the wall when entering the room and you lose a life. You have the possiblity to use a 'Snooze', but this only works if you reach a terminal before the robot shoots onto the wall. If such a robot is in the game, the game is unsolvable (if a puzzle piece is hidden in that room). Anyway I give 10 points ;-)"

fux: "With all the variations of the robots and the puzzle pieces you have a different game at every new start of the game. One of the best games that I have ever played and my number 1 at the C64. @AR: Maybe I am your brother? :) With the keyboard at the PC it is easier to control, and I can make it every fourth time without losing a life. The glitch, that you describe has fortunately been removed in my WinVice version. :)"

[edit] Miscellaneous

[edit] Trivia

In 2007 System 3 released a remake for the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DS. Next to the new version also the orignal version can be played.
Since 11.04.2008 the game is also available as download for the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console.