Mission Impossible

Publisher: Adventure International

Designer: Scott Adams

Type: Adventure

Platform: Various

Release Date: 1979

Rating:

This is the third of Scott Adam’s adventures, and it is one that was based on the popular television show at the time, Mission Impossible. Sure, many of us probably associate this series with the more recent Tom Cruise movies (which I believe has spawned something like 6 so far) but back in the day it was actually a television show. You play Jim Phelps (Ethan Hawke was an addition for the movies since the movies were supposed to follow on from the series) and you find yourself in a nuclear power plant. Your job, if you chose to accept it (not that you have any choice because, well, you can’t leave the power plant) is to stop it from going into meltdown.

Well, this is the first of the games where you don’t have to collect treasures. Instead, you have to make your way around the plant and work out how to stop it from, well, blowing up. Okay, you don’t quite have a time limit, though I suspect adding such a limit wouldn’t have been all that hard. However, we must remember that this was one of the earlier games, so the developer (namely Scott Adams) was no doubt experimenting with the style. I guess the fact that he has moved on from simply having one travel around a land, solving problems, and collecting treasure, certainly does add a lot to this game.

It was one of the earlier games that I played, namely because the computer that we had was, well, somewhat limited in the software that was available. However, my Dad did end up collecting a lot of these games, namely because I liked them so much. It is hard, don’t get me wrong, and once you complete it, it really doesn’t have all that much replay value either. Sure, I might have not played it for ages, but I do suspect that if I were to fire it up again, then, well, I could probably complete it pretty quickly (and even then, the solution is online as well).

Anyway, this game is also known as Secret Mission, no doubt because the owners of the show weren’t too happy that Adams was stealing and using their property (no doubt to attract more customers). Mind you, these days companies go out of their way to merchandise products through software, but this was back in 1979.

There doesn’t appear to be a Wikipedia entry for this game, though there are solutions, including one for the TRS-80 (which also includes details on that version of the game), as well as a walkthrough in Ultimate Game Solutions.