Game Review: Impossible Mission (Amstrad CPC, Ricochet)

“Another Visitor… Stay a while… Stay Forever…”

Few lines in gaming are as iconic as Impossible Mission of the original C64 1984 title by Dennis Caswell.

Impossible Mission – The Mission

Your mission… should you choose to accept it… is to thwart Professor Elvin Atombender from launching a missile attack to destroy the world.

Why would such a distinguished and talented professor wish to unleash hell on Earth?  Was it rejected love?, Ransom? Power?…

Much much worse… Elvin suffered the greatest injustice to humanity… A power outage prevented Atombender from clocking a high score on “Giggling Penguin Invaders from Outer Space in the Vicinity of Ursa Minor”.

From that point forward the professor reasonably blamed the entire world for his power company’s outage, vowing to ensure the world suffered the injustice…

Our Hero

You are our last hope, Agent 4125, with only six hours to search Impossible Mission’s underground complex, recover puzzle pieces, and assemble the passcode needed to stop the professor… Time isn’t on your side!

The good news… This maniacal genius is prone to forgetting his password, and luckily for you, clues are left scattered inside furniture throughout the lair.  Check all fireplaces, candy machines, guitars and more throughout 32 randomly placed rooms connected by lifts and tunnels.

The not-so-great news… The professor’s security robots are keen to fry you with a gajillion volts of electricity.  Try not to get zapped… The hope for humanity rests solely on you…

Exploring the Lair

Care is needed on many levels here, robots are armed with infrared imaging, sound and motion sensors.  You probably should move swiftly and stealthily.

Each room is constructed with platforms, catwalks and elevators which you must navigate with expert precision.  Mistiming a jump, getting zapped, or falling off screen will cost you 10 minutes of time.

The elevators in each room remember their position, entering or leaving a room won’t reset them, which adds to the challenge.

With each piece of furniture, hit UP to search for clues.  A progress bar is shown top right of the screen, revealing what you have found when complete.  Your search may be fruitless and reveal nothing, a puzzle piece or maybe passcodes that allow you to temporarily deactivate the security in a room or reset the elevators.

Thankfully furniture successfully searched is removed from the room, making it a little easier to track which items still need a good frisking.

Room Terminals

Scattered around rooms are computer terminals…  Hit UP to access a menu.

If you have collected the right passcodes from searching or in-game challenges, you have the option to Deactivate Security Robots or Reset the Lifts.  Use your tokens wisely… they are in limited supply.

The security system will reset after a short period of time and spring back to life.

Agent be nimble, Agent be quick, Agent jump over the robots quick…

Note that security also resets if you leave and re-enter the room.

Top Tip: Learn Keyboard/Joystick Parkour to jump over robots and save those passcodes for trickier rooms.

Passcodes…

Psst… you want passcodes for Atombender’s security terminals?  We got you…

Passcodes can be won by finding a puzzle room.  These rooms have a single terminal at the centre bottom of the screen sporting the latest state-of-the-art Trinitron 108” display with an 8 x 4 black and white grid pattern.

The concept is simple… Remember playing the classic game of Simon?… The grid will light up a sequence of squares and play a single note as each one lights.

The twist?  You must repeat the pattern, but not in the order shown!  Moving the giant glove cursor, select the grid squares in order of Low to High note.

Get it right… you’re awarded a random code for the terminals scattered throughout the lair, get it wrong and you start again.  Thankfully there’s no penalty.

The better news… you can play this game segment as often as you wish.  Sounds simple? Well… The musical notes start off with three pitches… Each time you correctly complete the sequence an extra note is added, up to 32 notes!

The Pocket Computer

The pocket computer is where Impossible Mission shifts from platformer to puzzle game…

The only way to access your MIA9366B device is within the safety of the main tunnel lift system. Hit JUMP when inside the lift to access the terminal interface.

The centre of the pocket computer displays the current puzzle pieces you’re working with along with current mission time or any messages.

From the pocket computer, you can scroll through the collected pieces of puzzle.  You need to combine four pieces which, if slotted together and oriented correctly using the mirror and flip buttons will reveal a letter from Atombender’s main password to the master control centre.

On the right side of the screen the interface consists of functions/features including Mirror, Pause, Trash, Undo, Change Colour and Exit.  The left interface Arrow keys scroll through the collected puzzle pieces and provide access to your main computer via a Telephone Dial.

If you get stuck combining pieces of the puzzle, calling back to your base computer will help give hints and clues.

But use your time wisely… Dial up back was slow and the telephone costs you two minutes of time…

Found all the Puzzle Pieces?

You’ve found all the puzzle pieces, combined them all and solved the master control room password… should be a piece of cake, right?

Well… you did remember where on the map where the Master Control Room is located?  You know the one with the giant grey vault door?  You’ve got to navigate back through Impossible Mission’s labyrinth of rooms and lifts, avoid the security robots and enter the room… All before the clock strikes 06:00 hours.

Do this, and you’ve finally saved the world, to win the gratitude of your paymasters, and adulation of the unsuspecting world population… No doubt your actions should stand you in good stead during your end of year review and inevitable Pizza Party?

No… Instead you’re greeted with a screen showing your score and a congratulations message.

Talk about anticlimactic… Where’s my pizza?

CPC Conversion – Hits and Misses

Given the legendary and iconic status of Impossible Mission, how does it hold up on the Amstrad CPC?

The Good

Let’s start with what matters most… The game play!  This isn’t just another average platformer… it’s a game with puzzles within puzzles.  The time-based system replacing traditional lives is inspired, and the constant pressure of the clock makes every decision feel meaningful.  Lose ten minutes to a mistimed jump or encounter with a robot and you’ll feel it.

It’s this time pressure that precisely makes Impossible Mission compelling.  I found myself wanting just one more attempt to nail a jump, learn the robot’s pattern, or squeeze in one more furniture search.  That “One more go” quality is the hallmark of a genuinely addictive game.

The robot mechanics reward observation.  Some glide left and right in fixed patterns, others wait to detect your proximity before acting, others will fire a six-foot bolt of electricity regardless of whether you’re nearby.  Learning their behaviours is satisfying, and once you’ve understood them, the game opens up considerably.

Searching furniture is cleverly designed too, thankfully progress isn’t reset if a guarding robot forces you to retreat.  You can search a little, dodge, return and carry on where you left off.  A small detail, but one that shows thoughtfulness in the games design.

The random map layout is a masterstroke for replay value.  Each game rearranges the rooms within the underground fortress, meaning no two playthroughs feel identical.

Crucially, the layout of individual rooms remains consistent so your hard-won knowledge of each room carries over, just in a different order.  It’s a brilliant way to keep the game fresh.

The game supports both keyboard and joystick, and some of the furniture artwork you’ll encounter while searching is a genuine highlight.

Top Tip: Some tight jumps require you to quickly reverse direction just before landing to avoid sliding off the platform.  Master this and a lot of the game’s trickier moments become manageable.

The Bad

The CPC has a rich colour palette, which makes it all the more puzzling that the developers chose to render every room in green.

The C64 version used cyan, yellow and green to visually distinguish rooms connected to different tunnels, a small touch that added both clarity and character.  The all-green approach here feels like a missed opportunity and makes the underground complex feel more visually repetitive than it should.

The animation of our hero is noticeably less smooth than the original, surprising given this isn’t a hardware limitation.  He still moves quickly and responsively, but it’s a polish gap that didn’t need to be there.

Sadly, there’s no synthesised or sampled speech, a notable omission given how achievable it was on the CPC.  The developers also missed a chance to vary the sound effects depending on the action… different audio cues for searching furniture or encountering different robot types would have added real atmosphere.

The pocket computer interface has one genuinely frustrating quirk, puzzle pieces are deselected after every operation, meaning you must reselect a piece every time you want to flip, mirror or recolour it.  Breaking the flow of what should be an engaging puzzle mechanic.

The Ugly

The sheer speed of some robots and the pixel-perfect precision required for certain jumps will test your patience early on.  Some jumps are brutally unforgiving, and the ten-minute time penalty for each mistake means a rough patch can feel catastrophic.

As frustrating as it may feel, stick with it because practice and patience pays off.  A full playthrough can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-78oE3G6-BQ Amstrad Maniaque completes a run through in under 37 minutes… damned impressive!

The Verdict

When I first picked this up, the robot speed and precision jumping felt off-putting.  I now see why Impossible Mission earns its legendary status.  It’s a cleverly designed, genuinely addictive experience that holds up remarkably well.

The CPC conversion left some polish on the table, the colour scheme and missing speech are real disappointments, but the core game is as compelling as ever.  For a title of this stature, I’d give the CPC version a solid 7/10.

With ICON64 recently working on Impossible Mission 3, it’s clear the game still has a passionate following, and rightly so.

Historical Perspective

At the time of release, Impossible Mission on the Amstrad CPC received a glowing reception.

Amstrad Action awarded it an impressive 85%, praising its Grab Factor and Staying Power at 87% each, despite weaker scores for graphics (67%) and sound (34%).

That split tells an interesting story… even then, the presentation wasn’t the star of the show… the gameplay was.

Looking back today, that still holds true.  The core design remains exceptional, even if the CPC conversion leaves a little polish on the table.

Bonus

Delving into the code, I discovered the developers took steps to slow down hackers.  All in-game strings and text were encoded by adding 31 to each character’s ASCII value.

Searching for strings natively wouldn’t reveal much, but subtracting 31 from each byte exposes the real text.

For example, the

encoded bytes: 0x72, 0x64, 0x62, 0x6e, 0x6d, 0x63, 0x72
decoded to 0x53, 0x45, 0x43, 0x4f, 0x4e, 0x44, 0x53

Spelling “SECONDS”.

Just for amusement, here are the ten final passwords in both forms:

AMSTERDAM
BALTIMORE
BARCELONA
BUCHAREST
HIROSHIMA
LIVERPOOL
MELBOURNE
NEWCASTLE
SINGAPORE
VANCOUVER

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You know what we think but why not share your thoughts on this game! Let us know what you think of it in the comments below, or add your own score using the slider in the summary box at the top of the review!