Impossible Mission - guess who ?

[DracIsBack]

I just wanted to see how much fun it is, and I did enjoy it quite a bit even without being able to beat it.

 

Yeah, it really is a fairly decent conversion ... quite playable. It's very hard though ... but I found the C64 one difficult too.

[krewat]

I recently started playing Impossible Mission knowing ahead of time it was impossible. I just wanted to see how much fun it is, and I did enjoy it quite a bit even without being able to beat it.

 

I was confused about a couple of things though. There is more than one layout to the base, is there a set number of maps or are these completely random as to where and what kind of rooms there are? Are the pieces random, set, or a combination of the two? If the pieces were random couldn't it be possible to get lucky and have all of them hidden in searchable furniture?

 

1) The base is laid out randomly, I believe. I just checked the source code, which I believe Brian Richter converted. Some of the comments suggested the layout is not entirely random as in when converting the C64 source code certain things were not - shall we say - "totally random". But, for the most part, the answer is YES - the layout is random. It is not a set of predefined maps.

 

2) Pieces are scattered at random. The source code specifically mentions my name (initials AAK) and I believe this is where the bug was introduced. I recall that in order to save space, I had to rewrite most of this code instead of using the original C64 code and just twiddling it to work. Further,

 

3) Yes, it is possible for all the pieces to be in searchable furniture. I specifically remember someone mentioning (here on this site, I believe) that they were actually able to finish the game - once.

 

Having just gotten more into the source code than I probably have in years, I am going to take another look at fixing the bug. stay tuned.

[krewat]

Mmm... maybe I'm wrong about something. be right back.

[krewat]

Correct, there are only 35 puzzle pieces scattered around. Some of them will/may wind up in terminals. So at the most, 35 pieces will be found, usually less.

 

Foo...

[NIKON]

Unless of course you have the PAL version released back in the day.

 

I stand corrected

[driph]

krewat, I know it's been a several year journey so far, but I just wanted to say thank you for sticking with this. The anecdotes and discoveries as you dig in have been a great read, please keep sharing as you go!

[SoulBlazer]

Since this game is going to be covered on the Atari 7800 Game By Game Podcast next week, I thought I'd do a little friendly bump and ask if anything new was found or to report -- and to help make this thread easier for Phil to find.

[krewat]

Gah, no, nothing to report, sorry to say. Thanks for the bump though, it gives me a reason to look into it again and resurrect the dev environment.

[+Mitch]

While you are checking, how is California Games floppy extraction going?

 

Mitch

[Shawn]

Gah, no, nothing to report, sorry to say. Thanks for the bump though, it gives me a reason to look into it again and resurrect the dev environment.

 

Hey Art,

 

I sent you a PM a while ago. Get back to me when you can. Is that 7800 dev unit I sent you working well still?

 

Shawn

[Lost Dragon]

Wowza.Never seen this thread before and really interesting to hear the insights behind 7800 I.M/Winter Games etc and how had things been very different they could of been far 'better' games...I.M not 'broken', have the voice sample, Winter Games to feature better visuals, more events etc etc.

 

So very much appreciate the sharing of info on that and 7800 Cal.Games.

[Lynxpro]

Well, my question is, "if this is the first issue, who are these letters from? Time travellers?" They wrote to a magazine before it existed? Anyone know if this came out of a "fun club news" thing before it became a distributed magazine or something?

 

I'm necro-bumping this for posterity's sake because it really cheesed me off and I want the record set straight about this for future readers of the thread.

 

The letters in The Atarian Magazine weren't *fake* nor were they acquired via the secrets of Gallifreyan time travel technology. The Atarian was published by the Atari Explorer Publications Corp, which was an Atari Corp subsidiary that also published Atari Explorer [Atari Corp's replacement for Atari Inc's earlier Atari Connection magazine]. The staff were the same. Kids and gamers of all ages were writing to Atari Explorer about the console games and then they were published in The Atarian during the switchover.

 

How do I know this? Because I'm one of the gamers who had his letter published by Atari Explorer and later had several of my 7800 game hints published in The Atarian.

 

I was an annoying little Atari fan and owner going all the way back to 1980 with my 2600. I had not been a member of the original Atari Club and when my best friend sent money in to join it, in early 1984, it was returned because the Atari Club and its AtariAge Magazine were cancelled. That was when Atari Inc collapsed. Add another year or two to that and I became a persistent writer to Atari Corp Customer Service asking about when various games would be released and to recommend various titles for them to consider making for their various systems. I was writing the letters on my ST via 1st Word and printing them out on my Panasonic KXP-1080i. One of the things I kept writing about was my desire for the Atari Club to be revived because, hey, Nintendo had created their own club. And I later wrote to Atari Explorer about it and at some point, it clicked and Michael Katz apparently persuaded the Tramiels to create a new club and magazine for the Atari console fans. And they announced the Atari Club in the letters to the editor section of Atari Explorer.

 

So there.

 

Atari Corp also wasn't oblivious to their customers wants. A lot of people shared their views via the Atari [computer] Users Groups and that info often made its way to Atari Corp via the Users Group Relations. They hired Bob Brodie for such a gig. And then there was Atari Corp's own BBS as well as their online presence on CompuServe and GEnie. And when Atari Corp stock dropped really low, many Atari computer fans in the various Users Groups would buy stock so they could attend the Annual Shareholder's Meeting and vocalize their concerns with the Atari Corp Board of Directors. I did that via my parents buying 50 shares when the stock dropped to $2 a piece. We live in NorCal so it wasn't too difficult to drive to Sunnyvale to attend those meetings. They were fun.

 

Alas, The Atarian was cancelled right before the Lynx was released due to a major disagreement between the editors and Atari Corp which caused the whole division to be scrapped, the staff fired, etc... and Atari Explorer also ceased publication.

[Inky]

Any stories from those shareholder meetings? That sounds interesting.

[Lynxpro]

Any stories from those shareholder meetings? That sounds interesting.

 

 

*Getting to see the Jaguar before it was debuted to the press.

 

*Getting to meet Jeff Minter who was still working on Tempest 2000 at the time.

 

*Getting to see Jack Tramiel become unglued when everyone took the Atari Computer coffee mugs home with them instead of leaving them there. That was started by Time Warner's rep and his entourage not returning their mugs and then everyone else followed suit. The subsequent shareholder's meetings had styrofoam cups thereafter.

 

*Questioning the hell out of management. I thought steam was going to come out of Sam Tramiel's ears when I suggested he wasn't really a huge Highlander fan since Atari Corp licensed the unpopular animated series to make a game from instead of the red hot Highlander live-action syndicated tv series of the time.

 

Good times...although going to Atari Corp Media Day in, what, 1995, - or was that 1996? - was much cooler. They took us out to a pizza parlor that was fighter-pilot themed with simulators and we got to dog fight each other. I think it was called Magic Edge...got dog tags out of it. Got to chat a lot with Ted Hoff and John Skrutch (sic). The folks from LFP's gaming mags didn't want to talk about Larry Flynt or the company's main business. The TWI guy was cool. I pretty much had the same reaction to Baldies as AVGN had years later.

[DracIsBack]

 

 

Alas, The Atarian was cancelled right before the Lynx was released due to a major disagreement between the editors and Atari Corp which caused the whole division to be scrapped, the staff fired, etc... and Atari Explorer also ceased publication.

 

 

 

 

I don't recall the timing being quite that way, but I could be wrong. Atarian was cannned quickly after three bimonthly issues, but I seem to remember Atari Explorer carrying on for a bit longer with some issues now including Lynx, 7800 and XEGS reviews.

[Lost Dragon]

Has there ever been a decent Highlander game though?

 

I bought the film tie-in by Ocean Software on the C64..admitly just for the Martin Galway music,but that was dire.

 

 

Edited December 16, 2017 by Lost Dragon

[Lynxpro]

 

 

 

 

I don't recall the timing being quite that way, but I could be wrong. Atarian was cannned quickly after three bimonthly issues, but I seem to remember Atari Explorer carrying on for a bit longer with some issues now including Lynx, 7800 and XEGS reviews.

 

 

I think the last issue of The Atarian had pictures of the "Atari Portable Color Game System"...which became the Lynx.

 

Both it and Atari Explorer were s***-canned at the same time because Atari Corp fired the editors and pulped the last issue of Atari Explorer because the editors printed something highly critical of the Tramiels.

[DracIsBack]

Now that you mention it, I remember the story of the editors being fired.

 

I seem to recall they then brought publication in house and continued into the early 1990s. Here are some issues I bought because they had 7800 reviews from early 1991.

 

Wish I still had the issue that reviewed some of the 8bit games like Xenophobe and Commando.

[krewat]

Back from the dead. Took a look at the IM code today and figured I'd tantalize everyone. It's only been 10 years...

[krewat]

No, no source code was in the box. I used that for notes a long time ago.

 

Interesting fact: The only copy of the source code was on paper. Epyx did not provide us with a binary copy of the source code. Brian Richter and I had to type in the source code by hand and then convert it.

 

I got so good at converting code on the fly that I could read the paper source and type converted code. Not that there was a lot of "conversion", more like read a section, and then type it in in whatever environment I was using. I think Brian's method was more of a "type it all in, go back and convert it later".