19. Impossible Mission

(Various Home, Dennis Caswell, 1984)
"Another visitor... stay awhile... STAY FOREVER!"
The evil Professor Elvin Atombender has hacked his way into the world's defense systems and is planning on creating missile-firing mayhem in six hours. Once this occurs, World war III will surely follow. Prof. Atombender is in deep though because one man is determined to stop his plan. A man in a black jumpsuit, a man who apparently didn't feel the need to bring a gun with him, a man who has mastered the art of the forward somersault...

..He has no name, you can call him Agent 4125.

Impossible Mission is one of my earliest gaming memories, I remember sitting in my friends living room and spending hours on the Commodore 64 with this game, playing on a huge TV that didn't have a remote and was surrounded in faux leather video cases and pirate copies of films like The Exorcist and Clockwork Orange. It was a joyous summer indeed.
As the incredibly well animated Agent 4125, the player must make their way through a series of single screen rooms, linked together by elevator shafts. Each room features a selection of items that must be searched for puzzle pieces and passwords, all whilst avoiding the patrolling robots and pits of doom. Unarmed, Agent 4125's only "weapon" is a ten out of ten somersault that he can perform over the robot's heads, he can also temporarily disable the robots should he collect a "Snooze" to do so. In the elevator, 4125 must put all the puzzle pieces together in order to open the main door to Atombender's control room so he can deadly somersault his ass back to the stone age and save the planet.

Impossible Mission is what retro games are all about. The game has basic but stylish graphics and cool sound with some iconic speech samples. Impossible Mission is simple in concept and easy to play but incredibly difficult to complete. There are thirty-six puzzle pieces to collect and re-form, these sequences are especially mind-numbing and are a far cry from the pixel perfect jumping fun that is had in the robot rooms. There's also a terrifying globe that slowly chases you ala The Prisoner and a "Simon says" style bonus game where you can gain extra "Snoozes".

I never completed Impossible Mission, I usually gave up after spending so much time rotating and re-colouring those damn puzzle pieces. Despite this, it is one of my favourite games of all time. I spent many hours playing it with friends and think its look, feel and sound effects are so very cool (especially the never-ending scream should our intrepid hero mis-judge a pit jump) I cannot emphasise enough how succesfully this game transports me back to my youth, it is one of those glorious games that actually conjures up images of long forgotten sights, sounds and memories.

Impossible Mission is easy to find today, it was on a slew of home formats (C64 being the definitive version) and was also re-released on PS2 and Wii Virtual Console. If you haven't played it before, track it down and give it a razz, it's an absolute classic.

Here's to Agent 4125, he was flipping over robots before Snake had even sparked up his first cigarette.