Producer: Silversoft
Memory Required: 16K
Recommended Retail Price: £5.95
Language: machine code
Author: Jeremy Brown

Mission Impossible is a Lander type game, where you must guide your shuttle craft down from the mother ship to the planet surface below and rescue stranded miners from the colony, and then return them to the mothership. The title describes the game very well and only seasoned arcade players with lightning reflexes should apply for the pilot's job!

There are three landing pads on the planet and you must touch down accurately using your retro rockets to slow - a fast landing can kill. Four layers of moving asteroids must be avoided on the way down. Having collected a miner the return trip is even more fraught, for the sky has now filled up with enemy alien craft. The retro-rocket can be used as a laser to blast them away before the tricky docking manoeuvre with the mothership. Should you get through a few screens another hazard is introduced, a force field through which you must find your way.

COMMENTS

Keyboard positions: Z/X left/right, SPACE retro/fire
Joystick options: Kempston, AGF or Protek
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: good
Graphics: good
Sound: average
Skill levels: up to you, but 3 speeds
Lives: 3
Screens: over 50

The setting up menu is excellent and all the various characters making up the instructions seem to turn inwards and fade as the game starts. This is a very hard game to master and needs quick reactions. Addictive.

The new Silversoft programs seems very user-friendly, with plenty of joystick options and good keyboard control - the games are all very user-cruel, bur that's just as it should be! They call this one Mission Impossible, and so it is, but it's worth mastering. Nice graphics and very playable.

The lander type game isn't new, but this is a very good version with its own little touches which help to make it enjoyable to play. Once you get the hang the first few screens are merely difficult - then it really gets tough! Takes time to get good at it.

Producer: Silversoft, 16K
£5.95 (1)
Author: Jeremy Brown

This is a Lander type game where you must guide your craft down to a planet's surface and rescue stranded astronauts or miners or something and return them to the mothership above. To get down to the planet you must dodge your way through the masses of asteroids, and then return through layers of enemy shipping. Controls provide a retro rocket for braking, important when landing as an inaccurate or fast landing results in death. In the return journey the retro becomes a gun to shoot at the aliens. On higher levels there is also a force field as added hazard. Throughout, the graphics are very good and move smoothly. Thus is a very difficult game and bound to be addictive. Takes time to get good at it. Sensible control keys, joystick: AGF, Protek or Kempston. 3playing speeds, over 50 screens, generally recommended. Overall CRASH rating 80% M/C

Producer: Silversoft, 16K
£5.95 (1)
Author: Jeremy Brown

This is a Lander type game where you must guide your craft down to a planet's surface and rescue stranded astronauts or miners or something and return them to the mothership above. To get down to the planet you must dodge your way through the masses of asteroids, and then return through layers of enemy shipping. Controls provide a retro rocket for braking, important when landing as an inaccurate or fast landing results in death. In the return journey the retro becomes a gun to shoot at the aliens. On higher levels there is also a force field as added hazard. Throughout, the graphics are very good and move smoothly. Thus is a very difficult game and bound to be addictive. Takes time to get good at it. Sensible control keys, joystick: AGF, Protek or Kempston, 3 playing speeds, over 50 screens, generally recommended. Overall CRASH rating 80% M/C.

FEW REWARDS IN DIFFICULT MISSION

Silversoft is not exaggerating very much when it calls one of its new releases Mission Impossible. Something like a cross between Frogger and Lunar Landing, the game features a space vessel which has been sent to rescue a group of astro-miners trapped on Titan.

As it descends from the mothership, the vessel has to avoid a barrage of meteors, any of which will destroy it, and it has to drop squarely on a landing pad if it is not to crash. On the way up, a host of alien spacecraft bar your way bit you can blast them with your laser, scoring points each time. Finally, connecting with the mothership is as difficult an operation as landing successfully.

The game promises 50 screens of ever-increasing difficulty but unless you are an expert arcade player you are unlikely to get beyond the first screen. Less expert players will find the game finishes very quickly and will have to wait for the title screen to appear and clear again before starting another game, which could prove discouraging.

The graphics are simple and it seems likely that only those with a taste for difficulty will find this a rewarding exercise. Mission Impossible is obtainable from Silversoft, London House, 271/273 King Street, London W6, and costs £5.95.