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Title: Mission: Impossible
Author:Ultra Games
Rom Player: NESticle
Reviewer: Dr. Boogie
Synopsis: Remember that old TV show, Mission: Impossible? No? Good. This NES game, as is the case with many “adaptations” of TV shows and movies, has very little to do with the show it is based upon. The mission in this game is to rescue “Doctor O.” and his secretary, who is actually Shannon Reed, a member of the IMF team, from the clutches of the Sinister Seven. It seems that Doctor O. invented the “U.S. military defense system.” I don’t know what they mean by that, and I can only assume that the IMF team was sent in to determine just what in the hell those whacked out Japanese game developers were talking about.
Anyway, you control three secret agents: Max Harte, Grant Collier, and Nicholas Black. Each on has there own nifty little abilities and horrible shortcomings to balance out those nifty abilities. Specifically, Max has an M16 (even though he’s supposed to be a SECRET agent), but carries a lot of stuff, and cannot move very quickly. It’s unfortunate that he didn’t think to bring any sort of heavier armor than the other two so that he wouldn’t just be a big, stupid, slow-moving target, but oh well. Grant can move extremely fast and can pick electronic locks (the manual refers to such locks as “dialing for rubles”, possibly due to the whole developers-freebasing idea), but has to punch enemies out. Nicholas is faster than Max, but slower than Grant. Since he hails from Australia, his weapon is, of course, a boomerang. Additionally, each character gets a different special weapon; Max has some remote detonated bombs, which do no damage to him because he’s just that good, Grant has some sleeping gas grenades, which also have no affect on him, and Nicholas can transform his very inconspicuous purple suit into a brown one, thus fooling the enemy into thinking that he is one in their ranks. Unfortunately, the brown suit only lasts for a short time, and some enemies, which I’ll get into later, can see through his wimpy disguise.
The gameplay alternates between a bird’s eye view of your agents, and two areas where you steer a boat and ski. There is one more, but it is nothing more than an agent descending/ascending a staircase. You do get to guide which way he goes, and you could be going one way then BAM, turn around and head the other way. Hoo hah! In the world, there are numerous hazards, such as pits in the floor, electric fences, spy cameras, cars, etc. The first stage, Moscow, has streets that are two lanes wide, but the cars that drive down the streets are also two lanes wide. Clearly, Russia’s failing economy was caused by their love of ultra-huge, gas-guzzling SUV’s that have no brakes. In numerous episodes, I would be walking along, only to hear the infamous horn-honking, then watch a car run down a citizen walking down the street. Not an enemy agent, though they were getting their fair share, just a regular Joe Blow-inski. Some particular traps, such as the flooding trap in the first stage, give you no warning to their presence, so that avoiding them boils down to you either picking the right direction to go to find a switch to deactivate it, or you let one of your agents inadvertently win the Darwin Award. Fortunately, emulators give you the gift of “Save State”, which makes the game somewhat easier.
The enemies are where the game really goes off on a tangent. Ignoring the fact that they are saddled with truly awful names, like “Slash Stiletto” and “Willie the Water Demon”, many of them are ninjas, robots, statues, and other such things that you would never find in the old TV series. The ninjas are particularly irritating, as they always roll into the scene, navigating corners and such very well despite being tucked into a little ball. They don’t really attack you, they just sort of push into you while wiggling their odd-looking fingers. Fortunately, they only appear in a room if a spy camera, robot spider, etc see you. For the most part, the bulk of the evil army doesn’t start off with you in their sights. Until they see you, most will just pace back and forth. When they do see you, they yell “You!” and then rush after you, either shooting unusually slow bullets, or just trying to punch you in the face. The other enemies do things like throw Molotov cocktails at you and shoot at you through the floor, but are fairly easy to deal with.
The music and sounds are handled surprisingly well. You get your usual blend of awesome electronic Nintendo music that is not too long, but not too repetitive, and altogether catchy. Sounds like the gunshots and explosions are given their electronic analogs, but car horns and grunts are somewhat true to the real world. Other than that, not a lot can be said of the sound.
Overall, the game is quite entertaining. It’s startling lack of resemblance to the TV show should wear off pretty quickly. That reminds me, I haven’t made any awful allusions to the show yet. That said, this review with self-destruct in five seconds.
Best Cheats: Just passwords
Game Play: 7
Graphics: 6
Music/Sound: 9
Originality: 7
Overall Rating: 7
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