Tags: Games


There isn't a game out there that can't be solved these days. If you get stuck, you just go to the internet and find the solution. But it wasn't always so! Oh, I know!

As a young Commodore 64 gamer, I had many many games, most of them without instruction manuals. Yes, software piracy was alive and well long before Napster, The Pirate Bay, and 1.44 MB disks. I was a kid, I didn't understand it. It was like trading toys with other kids. What harm was there in that?

There were so many games that I never solved, either because they were too hard or because I had no idea what the games' goals were. One of my favorite games that I didn't understand was Impossible Mission. Without the manual, we couldn't figure out what the puzzle pieces were or what they were supposed to look like when they were assembled. We didn't even know who the villain was. The game was amazing for its time, featuring synthesized speech ("Another visitor! Stay a while. Stay forever!"), and excellent character animation. We loved it, but never got a single puzzle solved.

Now, after so long, I stumbled upon the solution to the game on YouTube!


At long last, I now know how to beat that game! The video shows someone assembling the puzzle pieces, which takes about six minutes. Here it is:

Impossible Mission THIS!

I never would have figured that out. Without the internet, and without YouTube, we were really stuck. We could ask our friends, those pirates who gave us the game, but they were as stumped as us. If we knew someone with the game manual, they could have told us. But we don't know where those pirated games came from.

Some games today simply expect you to look stuff up on the internet. World of Warcraft is often lacking in information regarding quests, trade skill trainers, which zones are for which character levels, and other fairly important things. It's just assumed that you will use Thottbot or some other WoW database.

Diablo II had all those Horadric Cube recipes, and had no way of telling you what they were. I guess you were supposed to experiment and discover the recipes on your own. Being a multi-player game, with everyone else knowing the recipes, there isn't such a thing as "on your own". But seriously, the recipes appeared on the internet so fast that it was pointless to experiment with that cube. In fact, it was the game company who published the recipes on their own site. I guess the cube was a test of your web surfing skills.

Anyway, Impossible Mission. I had almost forgotten that gem. Here's a video that is much more like my experience with the game. Why did I play so much if I was so awful at it?

Good Thing We Had Unlimited Lives...

Now there is news that a company called System 3 is developing a Nintendo DS version of Impossible Mission, and the gameplay videos look amazing! Looks just like the original. I'm sold!

Check out another blogger who still loves this game over at Retro Junk.