Oh dear god, please no.
Do you remember having a moment in your youth where you realized that the things you loved could disappoint you? The NES game Mission: Impossible was one of those moments for me. I don’t remember why we had it, but we did, and I hated it so much. And now it’s back, to make my life miserable once again.
Mission: Impossible is a top-down action game based on the TV series of the same name – specifically, the reboot that was airing at the time, and not the 1960s original. It was released by Ultra Games, a shell corporation made by Konami to get around Nintendo’s “5 NES games per company per year” rule. Ultra also released the original Metal Gear, a version of Q*Bert, and the first couple of NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games. But enough about the things I would’ve rather played.
In Mission: Impossible, you are given control of three operatives from the series – Max (who has a gun, but is incredibly slow), Grant (who is fast, but fights with his fists), and Nicholas (who has a damn boomerang for some reason). Each character has a unique secondary ability as well. You can switch between them at will, but once one of them dies, they’re gone. These characters act as your three lives, as losing each of them ends the game. That can be rather frustrating, because the game is unbelievably difficult.
How difficult, you ask? Let me put it this way – one of the last times I tried to play this, I simply walked down the road and was fatally hit by a car within the first 10 seconds.
Yep, that still happens. Great. There are few aspects of Mission: Impossible that are the least bit forgiving – enemies deal a ton of damage, others push you off of edges, and harming innocent civilians (who look exactly like enemies) results in immediate death. Ugh.
The game does provide occasional “clues” from NPCs, such as this message from a guy in a warehouse filled with a lifetime supply of…MP?
Talking to this guy brought back a vivid memory from my childhood! In particular, I remember having absolutely no idea what this could possibly mean. To this day, I still don’t know.
On a more positive note, this game does bless us with the presence of 8-bit Peter Graves:
To its credit, the graphics and sound in Mission: Impossible are pretty impressive. The iconic Lalo Schifrin theme sounds pretty great. The gameplay is honestly perfectly functional, but the difficulty makes it a torturous experience. As an adult with a game blog, I got as far as a large sewer that I think was still part of the game’s first level.
As a kid, I’m pretty sure I never even got this far. If nothing else, Mission: Impossible certainly lives up to its title in more ways than one. If it weren’t so balls-punchingly hard, there might be a pretty darn good game in there. As it is, I can’t honestly recommend this to anyone, though if you’re looking for an absurd challenge or want to hate yourself I guess this qualifies.
Next week, I’ll be enjoying a 16-bit classic that is sooooooo much better than this.