Impossible Mission review - Sega Master System

The evil Professor Elvin Atombender has hacked into defence computers around the world and unless he's paid an enormous ransom within 12 hours will launch all nuclear missiles and obliterate humankind. Sounds like it's time to call Special Agent 4125 to sort out the situation. But remember - the clock is ticking...

The world-saving mission involves penetrating Atombender's 32-room underground bunker and tracking him down before he destroys the world. Simple? No chance - the place is riddled with robot defence systems who are alerted to Agent 4125's presence and are out for his blood. If 4125 touches a robot or is caught by the electric bolts they fire, he's stunned and ten minutes is knocked off the timer.

Atombender is locked behind steel doors in one of the rooms, and to enter 4125 must find and assemble a secret codeword from a microfilm. Evil villain that he is, Atombender has shredded the microfilm into 32 pieces and hidden them all over the bunker, so 4125 has to search all the furnishings in the place to find the pieces of film.

Once all the pieces of film have been collected, 4125 has to assemble them together to obtain the password - and then he can open the door and give Atombender a good kicking.

What the Mean Machines staff thought

Impossible Mission is one of my all-time favourite games - its excellent graphics (check out the amazing animation on Agent 4125 and the robots) and superb sound effects (including sampled speech!) gives it a fabulous atmosphere. The gameplay is simply brilliant, testing your reflexes to their utmost as you leap and run around trying to avoid the robots, then requiring brain power to piece together the microfilm. It's certainly a tough game, but even if you do complete it, because the game is different every time you play it, you can keep on coming back for more. If you want to play one of the best games available for the Sega, look no further that Impossible Mission.

Impossible Mission is one of the best games to date on the Sega. The graphics are bright, robust and colourful, and extremely well animated - 4125 runs, leaps and somersaults like an Olympic champion. The sound fits the bill perfectly, with buzzing robots, Atombender's taunts and the nerve-shattering scream as 4125 plummets to his doom. Overall, IM has just the right mixture of arcade action and puzzle-solving elements to ensure that once you start, you won't put it down until you've completed it. An essential purchase, and recommended without hesitation.

Retrospective comments

Impossible Mission on the Commodore 64 is my favourite game. Yes, I mean ever. I have completed it so many times, and still its siren song lures me back even today. It blends its elements so flawlessly, creating a perfect gaming experience. Other games have come close to usurping it but, just like gravity, Impossible Mission is an immovable constant in my life. And while I'm on the science tip, here's a very complex formula that I've just come up with to explain why it's so good:

Twitch Action + Head Scratchers + Digitised Voices + Rad Animation x Single Load = Instant Win

So how does this Master System incarnation stack up to my beloved? Pretty damn well, for the most part. Everything that was present in the C64 version can be found here, including the famous speech. Sure, it's a bit garbled and rushed, but it's there nonetheless. All the rooms have been translated perfectly, too, meaning that anyone who has played enough of the original won't have too much trouble adjusting to where things are.

Where seasoned agents will have to adjust, however, is the way they move around the rooms, dodging robots. If you're coming into Impossible Mission fresh you won't notice anything amiss. But a veteran will quickly recognise that the rules that Elvin's robot minions follow have been tweaked/broken (delete according to personal preference). There were times that I'd go to charge at a robot and somersault over it while giving a two-finger salute, only to have it behave in a way contrary to what I'm used to, frying me and wasting valuable time.

In some respects, though, the Sega version is actually an improvement. Although I still love the cool minimal design of the original, the Commie's graphics are obviously never going to win in a cage match against the Master System's. Here, the visuals are pretty slickly updated, while not being so overdone as to be obstructive (yeah, I'm looking at you, Impossible Mission DS).

Eventually I made peace with the differences between this and the classic I hold so dear. Once I accepted that the robot behaviour had been changed, simply looking at the game for what it was instead of holding it up to the original, I enjoyed it a lot more and found it very playable. Obviously it will never replace the brilliant C64 version, but it was certainly entertaining enough to make me stay a while, if not forever.

- Cal 'buzz_clik' Skuthorpe