Secret Mission

The Good
You are Mr. Phelps, an employee working at a nuclear power plant. A disaster is waiting to happen, and your colleagues are running around like headless chooks. Not one of them is willing to tell you that a saboteur somewhere in the facility has activated a bomb near the reactor, and you must prevent it from being detonated. To make matters worse, the saboteur was good at engineering and has rewired the security system to make your task difficult. To get anywhere near the reactor room, you will need to reconfigure the security system and find three security passes needed to infiltrate all the sectors.

Mission Impossible is a text-only adventure game from Scott Adams, who would later rename it Secret Mission due to the threat of legal action. As always, two-word commands in the form of a verb-noun sequence must be entered to progress through the game. You can abbreviate any directions (eg: W for West). The game will also accept minor spelling mistakes. You will have to go into the grey room more than once, where there is a console before you, and you need to sit down on the chair. I entered “sit dow” by accident instead of “sit down”. It’s nice that the game knew what I meant.

I like how the text is colorful, with descriptions in green text, recent actions in blue, and the prompt in red. All the text in the game stands out against the white background. Sound is not available unless you are one of the few people lucky enough to have the Votrax sound module and are able to hear all the text on the screen being read out.

I don’t think you have to complete this adventure in a reasonable amount of time. Having said that, you can have as much fun in this game as I did. There is a built-in save option, which you can use if you want to start at the same spot later as long as you have a cassette handy. (Cartridges are the only medium where you can’t store saved games.) Also, I suggest making a map of all the areas and the items in those areas; the game world is huge; and it is easy to go around in circles.

The Bad
The first lot of text gives a description of the room as well as any visible exits, but from then on, you have to type “look” for the game to give any of that additional information.

The Bottom Line
Mission Impossible is number three of Scott Adams' adventure series. It is a game that doesn't require you to collect treasures, but disarm a bomb threatening to blow up a nuclear reactor inside a facility. It follows the same mechanics as his previous adventures, with different colored text for the descriptions, actions, and prompts, and two-word commands need to be entered to proceed. The game requires you to use your imagination as it is text-only. Adams later re-released the game with graphics under a new name to avoid legal action. Even if you complete the game, play the re-release and see if your imagination has been proven right.