Impossible Mission II is the sequel to the extremely popular and successful 1983 game Impossible Mission (made for Spectrum ZX and Commodore 64). Like the first game this game also puts you in a world of espionage, killer robots, interesting puzzles and much more.
The mission begins in an elevator shaft. The elevator automatically stops at any spot where you can get off. You can turn left or right to enter a room, with your route steadily mapped out on the lover part of the screen. The rooms contain a series of catwalks and gantries containing various items of furniture and machinery, all guarded by robots of varying intelligence. The aim is to navigate the catwalks and walk up to each item to 'search it'. A bar appears indicating the amount of searching left to do. Once this bar disappears, a discovered password is displayed or if you are unlucky a message saying 'Nothing Here'.
The robots try their utmost to zap you with their ray guns, or force you off the catwalks into the abyss below. Each loss of life takes away your precious mission time. To help you on the way you get computer passwords which you can enter and freeze the robots for some time, reset the platforms, turn on the lights, etc.
The main goal of the game is to find all the pieces of the main puzzle and put them together (you manipulate the puzzle pieces in the elevator shaft, where you see the bottom part of the screen). Your time is limited, so you better hurry.
Also you must know that every time you enter the building the rooms will be rearranged, so you should save the game before exiting if you might want to save the game at the very beginning, so you could come to the same building over and over again (that’s a good way to practice the game and certain rooms).
This game is slightly easier then the prequel was (and that’s a good thing, because part one was almost too difficult). Also the problem with this game is that the PC sound at that time still didn’t really support the speech (the C64 version of the first game started with one of my favorite game quotes: “Welcome visitor. Stay a while. Stay forever!”). Otherwise there’s not much sound or music. The graphics are nice though (but you should run the MCGA version: IM2_mcga.exe). Especially the animation that’s flawless, although you’ll have to practice the jumps a bit.
All in all this game is a must have for every real games (not to mention a real classic). The game clearly deserves a 5. It was the prequel that became a legendary game, but it’s this sequel that the better of the two games (yes, this is one of those sequels that’s definitely better then the original game).
When you run the game you have to chose one of the exe file. The files have different names which represent different graphic options (like CGA, MCGA, EGA). I suggest you choose the EGA version, because it features the best graphics.
The game does work in WinXP also, but it doesn’t run smoothly anymore and the sounds are PC speaker only (DOSBox also only has the PC speaker sound, but at least it comes from the real speakers and sounds a little better).
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