Baby, it's cold outside

Hey there, it's November in Chicago, the snow has been falling (got about an inch last Thursday) and it's cold outside!

Is there anybody out there (besides me) who remembers Impossible Mission on the Commodore 64? Here was a platform game that was hard to put down and even spawned a sequel. Oddly enough, in this age of copycat games, it's odd that no one has tried to do a game like Impossible Mission. Which is just as well, since Codemasters has dusted off the original and put it on the Nintendo DS.



The game plays almost exactly like the original - you're a secret agent and you've got to stop Professor Elvin Atombender (a mad scientist) from destroying the world. All you have to do is search his secret underground lair for the codes that will get you into his launch bunker. As luck would have it, those codes have been broken into 36 pieces and hidden in objects all around the lair. All you have to do is search the objects, collect the codes, and avoid being disintigrated by his killer robots in the process. Hey, what mad scientist's secret underground lair is complete without killer robots. Unfortunately, you have no weapons to fight the robots with - you have to observe their patrol patterns and use your nimble feet to leap over them at the right moment. If you fail, you'll die and (what's worse) 10 minutes is subtracted from the doomsday clock in the corner that indicates when the evil genius is about to launch his missile (hey, it takes time to get your clone out of mothballs).


Once you've found the code fragments, you have to put them back together again. The codes are put together like jigsaw puzzle pieces and you have to flip them and change their colors so they'll match. Get the codes put together and run into the scientist's bunker just in the nick of time to stop the launch!

If you remember the original Impossible Mission by Epyx, you'll love being able to play this classic again. Otherwise, if you like a clever platformer with puzzle elements and a race for time, you should give Impossible Mission a try!