How to play Impossible Mission online
- Run left and right: left and right arrow keys
- Ride the elevator or a lift platform: up and down arrow keys
- Search furniture or use a terminal: stand in front of it and hold the up arrow
- Somersault (in a room): Z
- Open the pocket computer (in the elevator or corridors): Z
- Start a game: Z or F3 (Reset). Reset during play starts a new game with a fresh layout.
Choose the Europe (PAL) version. The American (NTSC) release has a well-known bug: some password pieces can end up inside computer terminals, which cannot be searched, so the game cannot be won. The European release does not have this problem. Use the USA / Europe switch on this page.
Gameplay
Professor Elvin Atombender is breaking into the world’s missile computers, and you must stop him. His hideout has 32 rooms joined by elevator shafts and corridors. Each room is a set of platforms and lifts guarded by robots, some of which fire electric bolts. Watch out for the floating electric orb as well.
You have no weapon. Instead, you search every piece of furniture, from sofas to vending machines. A search can reveal nothing, a Snooze code that switches off a room’s robots for a while, a Lift Init code that resets its platforms, or a puzzle piece. Codes are used at the security terminal near each room’s entrance.
The puzzle pieces are assembled on your pocket computer, where you can flip them, change their colour and test whether two fit. Four pieces make a puzzle, and each finished puzzle gives one letter of a nine-letter password. Once you have it, find the control room door in one of the blue rooms.
The clock runs from 12:00 to 6:00. Falling off the screen or being zapped costs ten minutes, and asking the agency for help by phone costs two. At the end you score 100 points for each piece and each code you found, 500 for each puzzle solved, 1,000 for completing the mission, and a point for every second left on the clock.
Tips
- Study each robot before you move. They follow different programs: some are fast, some shoot, some cannot see or hear you.
- Skip the hard rooms at first. Come back once you have Snooze and Lift Init codes to make them safe.
- Step over small gaps. A gap no wider than a lift platform can be walked across if you keep holding the direction.
- Jump late for big gaps. You can let one foot go over the edge before pressing Z for extra distance.
- Combine pieces carefully. The computer lets you join any two pieces that don’t overlap, even if they don’t belong together. If a puzzle stops working, undo and try again.
The story behind Impossible Mission
Dennis Caswell designed Impossible Mission, and Epyx released it for the Commodore 64 in 1984. The Commodore 64 original was an early user of digitized speech, with Elvin greeting you with “Another visitor. Stay a while… stay forever!” From 1985 to 1990 it was converted to many other systems, including the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, Master System and the Atari 7800.
The 7800 conversion was programmed by Arthur Krewat. The North American cartridge shipped with the bug described above, which can place puzzle pieces where you can never reach them, while the European release works as intended. Many years later Krewat worked on recovering his old source code from floppy disks, and a fixed version was reported on the AtariAge forums.
