Impossible Mission

The player takes the role of a secret agent who must stop an evil genius, Professor Elvin Atombender, who is believed to be tampering with national security computers. The player races against the clock to reassemble and decrypt the password to Atombender's control room while avoiding deadly robots. Password pieces are found by searching furniture in the rooms. When searching, the player can also reset all moveable platforms and freeze enemy robots for a limited time.

The game also features similar rewards for completing bonus puzzles. Impossible Mission enemies include two types of enemies. The first are the robots. These have a cylindrical main body.

The first element of the game to be created was the player character's animations, which designer Dennis Caswell lifted from a library book about athletics. Caswell recalled, "I animated the somersault before I had any clear idea how it would be used. I included it because the animations were there for the taking ..." Caswell cites Rogue as his inspiration for the randomised room layouts, and the electronic game Simon as his inspiration for the musical checkerboard puzzles. The hovering balls were inspired by the Rover "security guard" from the Prisoner TV series.

The Commodore 64 version features early use of digitized speech: "Another visitor. Stay a while... ", and a lengthy scream - later also heard in Beach Head II: The Dictator Strikes Back - when the player falls down a shaft. The digitized speech was provided by the company Electronic Speech Systems, who drastically raised their prices after Impossible Mission became a successful test case.

In the April 1985 issue, Computer & Video Games rated the Commodore 64 version 38 out of 40 and awarded it Game of the Month. In May 1985, Zzap!64 editors ranked Impossible Mission second in their list of the best Commodore 64 games, while readers ranked it first, with 26% of votes. Citing Impossible Mission as example, Compute!'s Gazette in 1986 praised Caswell as "one of those rare people who has all the skills necessary to create and design an outstanding game" while software development teams were becoming more common.

COMPUTE! listed the game in May 1988 as one of "Our Favorite Games", writing that the sound effects of the character committing suicide was one of their guilty pleasures. Console XS rated the Sega Master System version 89% in 1992.

A sequel, Impossible Mission II, followed in 1988. It further complicated the quest with new traps and items. Elvin's stronghold also grew in size, divided into a number of towers which the player had to traverse, all the while picking up pieces of the password.

The game Electrocop was rumored to have started as a sequel to Impossible Mission, but this has not been substantiated. In 1994, Impossible Mission 2025 was released for the Amiga. It kept the same idea as the previous games, and mainly featured updated graphics and audio, also allowing the player to choose among three different characters. The game also contains the Commodore 64 version of Impossible Mission.