Producer: US Gold
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £7.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Softstone

First produced for the Commodore 64 by Epyx, Impossible Mission was a game which some C64 owners used to advantage in the arguments about whether their computer or the Spectrum was the better games machine. Now there's a Spectrum version of the game, published by US Gold, which follows the action of the original very closely - although the sound effects have suffered in translation.

You play the role of a crack secret agent on a mission to save the world from the evil doings of the ultimate hacker. A mad professor type, Elvin Atom-bender, has accessed all the defence computers maintained by the superpowers, and is currently trying to puzzle out the codes which will set off a missile attack so huge that the whole globe will be destroyed.

Elvin has amassed a fortune from hacks into computers run by banks and financial institutions and has constructed a massive underground complex patrolled by a variety of robot guards. The game is played against the clock - starting at noon, you have a mere six hours of game time in which to penetrate the madman's underground lair, discover his security code and penetrate his control centre.

Each room within the complex has several levels, or platforms, on which items of furniture and computer equipment are to be found. Small one-person lifting platforms may be used to access the different levels within each chamber, and the thirty two rooms in the complex are linked by a network of tunnels and lift shafts.

Elvin has a computer system which monitors the entire complex - at least one terminal on this system is found in every room. If you have the appropriate password, it is possible to temporarily deactivate the robots in that room so that passage through it is much simpler. Alternatively, you may wish to use a terminal to reset the lifting platforms to their starting position in the room. Accessing a terminal is simple - just approach it and push forward on the joystick which causes it to display a menu screen. Without the appropriate password, however a terminal will not accept input...

The platform reset and robot 'snooze' passwords can be found by searching the pieces of furniture and equipment scattered around the rooms. The password to the control room is only revealed once thirty six pieces which make up nine puzzles have been collected and assembled - puzzle pieces are also concealed in the objects.

Searching a piece of equipment is easy: you just approach it and push forward on the joystick whereupon a window appears on the screen with a bar graph display which diminishes as you search. Some objects can be searched very quickly, others take some while. If you break off a search, perhaps because a robot is approaching, it can be resumed where you left off so long as you don't leave the room. Once the search is complete the window reveals what has (or hasn't) been found.

The defence robots all look the same, but behave according to different programmed patterns. Some of them can fire a deadly electrical charge, others can home in on your agent; most of them patrol a section of catwalk, moving up and down its length. Contact with a robot loses you ten minutes of game time, as does a fall through the bottom of a chamber. Certain items can only be searched when the robots have been disabled, and a strategic approach is necessary if you are to complete the mission - a finite number of 'snooze' and platform reset passwords is available.

The mission would be truly impossible were it not for your portable computer. This machine keeps track of the rooms you have passed through, giving you a constantly updated map of the complex which includes a marker for your current position. Your computer can also be used to help assemble puzzle pieces - pressing the fire button while you are in the lift causes the map display to be replaced with an icon-driven menu screen.

Whenever you find a piece of the main puzzle, it is committed to your computer's memory. You can manipulate these puzzle components through the icon driven display, moving them from memory into a work area and flipping them over horizontally and vertically and changing their colour. It is also possible to dial up the computer at your base to ask for on-line assistance in solving the puzzles - but this costs you two minutes of game time per call.

Each completed puzzle consists of four elements and there are nine puzzles in all. Each time you solve a puzzle you are rewarded with one of the letters in the evil Elvin's master password. Once you are in possession of all nine letters of the control room access code, you may enter, thwart the madman's plan and save the world from destruction.

Saving the world brings a bonus of 1000 points, with one point added to your score for every second remaining on the game clock when you enter the control room. If you don't actually save the world, you still get points for finding puzzle pieces and passwords as well as for solving each of the nine puzzles.

COMMENTS

Control keys: CAPS left, Z right, P up, L down, B-SPACE fire
Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2 Keyboard play: average
Use of colour: not inspired, problems with the animated figures
Graphics: straightforward. Can be confusing when the agent is searching
Sound: footsteps and effects for robots and lifts, but no speech synthesis
Skill levels: one
Screens: thirty two rooms, plus corridors and portable computer display

I didn't think Impossible Mission would survive the conversion from C64 to Spectrum but it seems to be more or less the same. Graphically, this platform game is good - although there are a few glitches. The sound is obviously not as good as the C64 version but it is quite well used all the same. The various types of droid all look the same, so you don't know what to expect when you sneak up behind one to search an object. My main niggle is that you have to be exactly lined up on a lift platform before you can move it up or down. Generally I'd recommend Impossible Mission as it is a very playable.

The Spectrum conversion of Impossible Mission, as might be expected, falls down on sound. The realistic, fading scream as your agent falls into one of the pits in the floor of a room is totally absent - not a squeak on the Spectrum. The sound of his footsteps and the main lift is also disappointing when compared to the Commodore version. Otherwise the game is a very faithful conversion. It is, however, a bit of a pain to play. While your agent scampers around, somersaulting and jumping with glee, using the lifting platforms is a pest. You have to position your man very precisely for them to work which makes life that bit more difficult. A couple of buglets seem to have crept in too - on one screen you can somersault through the platform above you for instance. Overall a good game, and one which is much more than a platform jumping game. Joystick skills as well as brainpower are needed to save the world in this one. Annoyingly frustrating, it's quite addictive.

Impossible Mission is a classic Commodore game because of its ace graphics, sound, brilliant game content and speech. I wondered how the Spectrum version would compare with the 64 version as I loaded it in. I didn't wonder for very long - a few minutes play soon decided that. The graphics are pretty murky with heaps of attribute problems and the animation isn't anywhere as good as the CBM's, it's pretty slow and jerky. The sound is pretty reasonable for a Spectrum game but the game has no speech which made the original game something really special. All the other original features of the game are here and the game plays fairly similarly, apart from the control being unresponsive and the difficulty in judging a jump. I suppose I've been spoilt by playing the 64 version but I still think it could've been improved upon... never mind though - it's still Impossible Mission.

IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

Phil South your mission... should you decide to accept it... is to penetrate US Gold's new blockbuster... discover amazing secrets... complete the Impossible Mission... reveal all... should you fail, you'll never write for YS again... this tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds... 4... 3... 2... 1...

US Gold has done the impossible itself by bringing Impossible Mission to the Spectrum. It's been an all-time smash on the wrong sort of computer for ages. Now, at long last, the perils of special agent 4125 have come home to the Speccy including the same triffic animation, gripping graphics and brain blowing puzzles! Impossible Mission reaches a new level in platform games as well as amazing acrobatics on the platforms and lifts, the skill of outwitting the killer robots, you've got to solve some truly challenging puzzles.

You play the highly-trained agent 4125 on a mission to penetrate the 32 roomed underground fortress of evil Elvin Atombender and prevent him from turning the Earth into a cloud of expanding gas and those little glittery bits you used to get in Star Wars. Elvin is a mad scientist and like all good mad scientists, he's surrounded himself with death-dealing robots and concealed the passwords to the door of his lab in the machinery scattered around the different levels. You must search every nook and cranny, juggle the pieces you find and make up the punchcards that will allow you to make your unwelcome entrance into Elvin's laboratory.

Agent 4125 is a highly-trained agent of the calibre of Bond or Rambo. So confident, fit and generally hunky that he can take on Atombender's robot hoards empty-handed - just using his daring and acrobatic skill to keep out of reach of their probing plasma beams. In fact, the only piece of equipment he actually remembered to bring with him is his trusty wrist-mounted MIA9366B microcomputer. This souped-up digital watch has a radio telephone so that you can call up the mainframe computer back at base and get it to help solve the puzzles for you.

But it's not the story line that's brilliant (although it's better than most and there's nothing I like better than a good story line). It's the way the game looks and plays. A lead I picked up suggests that the special agent's movements (running, somersaulting and landing) were 'rotoscoped' - a real person was filmed doing the actions and the sprites drawn from the frames of the film. I don't care how it was done - the results are incredible. Because the animation is so realistic, the game is simply absorbing. You really do feel for poor ol' 4125 - his fear, his thrills, his daring. Just like a movie!

Impossible Mission is going to be a firm favourite - my Speccy for one is going to get used to loading it up. Your mission, Agent Reader, is to go out and buy yourself a copy. Believe me, it s one of the easiest and most rewarding assignments you'll ever get...

Publisher: US Gold
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K
Joystick: Sinclair, Cursor, Kempston

Commode lovers thought it was great, apparently, but we weren't so sure - on the lovable old C64 you get brilliant music. That's not possible with the Spectrum.

Nevertheless, Impossible Mission holds up as a good game even without the frills. You play a secret agent sent to investigate the plots of mad scientist Elvin, who is holding the world to nuclear ransom. You must somersault through the levels of his hideaway, collecting pieces of the secret code.

Strategy is important. Codes are gained by searching the various objects - bookcases, terminals, safes and the like - in the complex, but getting at those objects is more difficult. It's easy enough to get most of them, but you'll have to organise your use of the lifts to dodge the robots which patrol the complex.

There are also rooms with puzzles in them. You'll have to work out what the puzzle is before you solve it.

What makes Impossible Mission particularly addictive is that it produces a completely new map each time you play, the rooms linked to central lift shafts are assembled in a different order for the new game. That means you can't use the same techniques over and over again to win.

Add to that the slick graphics of the sort you expect from US Gold, nice animation with the somersaulting agent, and good use of what little sound is available, and you have a fine entertainment.

Label: Ricochet
Author: Epyxin
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Although Impossible Mission 2 is soon on the streets, it's worth catching up with its illustrious predecessor. IM looks a tiny bit dated now, but it can't be denied that the animation is fine and the background graphics are designed to keep colour clash to a minimum.

The plot has been ripped off by dozens of lesser imitators, secret agent penetrates base of mad scientist, and has to fight through hordes of guardian robots, searching for information to destroy the base. In this case you don't so much fight as jump your way out of trouble, the agent's only defence against electricity-spitting droids is to execute a graceful leap over their heads.

The display of your pocket computer helps you to assemble puzzle pieces into the pattern which will reveal a letter in the final password.

Don't miss this one.

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: US Gold
PRICE: £7.95

They said it couldn't be done - But U.S. Gold have achieved the impossible and converted the Game of the Year onto the Spectrum. Ok, so the amazing speech synthesis on the 64 version of Impossible Mission is missing - but everything else is there. Including the awesome addictiveness of the original.

In case you've been hiding under a stone for the last 12 months, we'll tell you just what you've got in store once you lay hands on a copy of this game.

The evil Elvin Atombender has been tampering with the world's computers and is threatening to launch a deadly nuke-missile shower that will destroy the Earth.

Your job is to penetrate Elvin's underground HQ, break his security code - and get into the control centre before he launches the missiles. You have just six hours to finish.

Being a mad prof type, Elvin has left bits of the control room password scattered about the 32 rooms of his stronghold - hidden in his furniture. You must search the rooms to find the bits and then use your pocket computer to piece them together in the correct order.

Sounds easy - but not when you've to deal with Elvin's unfriendly droids who inhabit each room. And find your way around the baffling maze of rooms and lifts.

The rooms are constructed to foil even the best secret agent - packed with catwalks and platforms connected by lifts. In each room there is a computer terminal which you can use to disable the robots or reset the lifts - but only if you have discovered the right passwords during your search for the key to Elvin's control room.

Elvin's robots behave in different fashions. Some are sluggish and don't seem too worried when you enter a room. But others will rush to zap you with a high voltage charge as soon as you set foot on their territory.

You have to deal with these using a snooze password which puts them temporarily to sleep. You can either pick up these passwords during a search of Elvin's furniture in the rooms or by playing a sort of "Name That Tune" game in the Code Rooms you will find during exploration. By playing you earn extra snooze and lift reset passwords.

The screen displays shows your agent in his current location and in the main window, with a plan view of the underground base - which unfolds as you explore - in the window below.

Impossible Mission is a game any self respecting Spectrum owner should have in their collection. We defy you not to be hooked from the moment you load it. A mission not to be missed...