Good evening, Mr. Kalata. We've discovered an alarming lack of espionage stealth action coverage on Hardcore Gaming 101. Your mission, Kurt, should you choose decide to accept it, is to assemble a team of writers to create an article on a game that was developed three times and is loosely based on a movie loosely based on a TV series loosely based on another TV series. This message will make your head self-destruct if you stare at it long enough.

When Ocean - creators of licensed "gems" like Hook, Jurassic Park and The Addams Family - first announced a new Mission: Impossible game (following an earlier 8-bit adaption by Konami) as a tie-in with the upcoming action blockbuster starring Tom Cruise, it was still a two-dimensional 16-bit affair, which looked suspiciously close to Flashback. Early previews even showed a jungle level next to some events from the movie. This version also showed off a detail that would be denied to the later reincarnation: Tom Cruise's likeness.

Tom Cruise in 16-bit

But eventually the old generation would get shoved aside, and by the time the N64 was nearing release, no one gave a rat's ass about the SNES anymore. So Ocean scrapped the whole sidescrolling approach and instead put their California branch (it is unknown where and by whom the SNES version was being developed) to work on the very first 3D stealth action game, with a release planned for summer 1997.

Mission: Impossible, as presented in 1997

Alas, after some delays and difficulties the development team broke apart, and if it wasn't for someone at Infogrames clinging onto the game, it would have disappeared just like the first draft. The French-based software house had recently bought out Ocean, and thus the code and assets were brought to Lyon, where a new team headed by Arthur Houtman (who later came to direct and coordinate Infogrames' motorsport games department) found themselves tasked to make something of it all. Needless to say, the game underwent some further changes of direction. In old screenshots, one can spot unused stages or some that were implemented differently. One sees hero Ethan Hunt freely exploring Waterloo Station, for example, which is a sniper sequence now. Most changes that can be distinguished today, however, are of cosmetic nature; Hunt used to wear different outfits (including a wetsuit—he doesn't swim in the final game), the face of his female sideckick got a makeover from boring nerdy chick to hot nerdy chick, and Hunt himself used to look a lot more like Tom Cruise, even though the actor didn't allow for his face to be used as reference from the start. That wasn't the only element he objected to, either: He also had a problem with violence in video games, and thus Hunt was to never kill an enemy. Well...

...that didn't happen

Just as the developers took liberties with Cruise's wishes, they didn't tie the game slavishly to the movie, either. It follows the same basic plot points—the mission in Prague, Hunt being labeled as the mole, dealing with Max and discovering Jim Phelbs as the real traitor— but beyond that, it's just as loose an adaption of the film as the film was to the series. All characters besides the three aforementioned Hunt, Max and Phelps are either gone, swapped around in their roles or have them significantly shortened. Phelbs' wife Claire most notably is replaced as the female sideckick / potential love interest by the much more bland Candice Parker, a captured agent Hunt has to rescue in Prague. That insignificant little plot point of everyone dieing there is also gone, making the following witch hunt after Hunt (damn that punny name) not quite plausible. More care was taken to implement the movie's trademark gadgets, namely the face maker and the explosive gum, although they're used in different situations. The trademark phrase in the briefings is also changed from the movie and is actually more in line with what one would hear in the classic TV series ("decide" instead of "chose").

The gum is in the game, the guy isn't

In that manner, most of the game's "stealth elements" consist of the gimicky use of such... gimmicks. (Damn those punny words!) The objectives usually break down to "find your gear, use gear a at location x and gear b at location y, shoot a few people, find the exit." To stay undetected means to get a new face so one can walk around freely. Hunt can crouch down, but he does so for no apparent reason. Sometimes it can be of advantage to attack enemies from behind, and at one point Hunt can spray blue paint on surveillance cameras to avoid more guards getting after him. Most of the time, however, the game is just alternating between adventure portions and shooting portions.

The "puzzles" are never very challenging, though, as most of the time you're told where to go and what to do. Sometimes targets don't show up on the radar, leading to the 3D equivalent of a pixel hunt, like when Ethan has to find the switch that opens the door to a secret communications room in an office. Typical for the period the camera is rather awkward, the only form of control allows you to switch to a very close over-the-shoulder view, which also makes Ethan transparent. With a weapon drawn, this automatically puts you in manual aiming mode, which works similar to Rare's N64 FPS, meaning you can't move while aiming. Just shooting while running is usually accurate enough, though, as long as you're facing in the same general direction and no allie is standing in between Ethan and his enemy.

Occasionally the game breaks out into special tasks, of course the trademark scene where Ethan slides down on a rope to infiltrate a high security server room can't be left out here. In another mission the player takes control of a sniper to protect Hunt, who's running around aimlessly at the station while ordinary people and tarned assailants alike keep acting overly suspiciously around him. The last scene finally puts you in control of the cannon on a gunboat and is just one big orgy of destruction.

All the different sequences share the same awkwardness of controls: The main game frequently switches between tank controls and "normal" directions and it's hard to discern whether or not you've taken down an enemy until he collapses with some delay, the rope relies on unintuitive yanking the analog stick to make Ethan swing around, and the station level has dead angles that can't be seen from either of the two available sniper points. The designers tried to compensate by making the game rather forgiving of mistakes. Ethan got a ridiculously long health bar, and although its status is kept over all of the up to 8 parts of a mission, it's fully restored when you lose once, while you're free to restart at that same level. There are some annoying parts, mostly concerning lasers or electric fields, but overall the game is rather easy— at least in "Possible" mode, as soon as you switch to "Impossible" Ethan is a lot easier to kill and the enemies are more aggressive at the same time. It also adds a few extra objectives here and there, though never as extensive as "00 Agent" in Goldeneye did.

In 1998, this was a cool effect

Although Mission: Impossible was originally supposed to be an N64 exclusive title, Infogrames followed up with a PlayStation release (developed by X-Ample Architectures) a little more than a year later. Far from being a lazy downgraded port, it made full use of the advantages of the CD format, or at least tried so. Now all the dialog lines are voiced (on the N64, only the two briefing missions are, alongside some silly comments by Hunt whenever he shoots an enemy or gets a new instruction), but the acting ranges from mediocre to horrendous. Worse though is the fact that whenever a line of dialog is spoken, the music just stops, destroying whatever cinematic atmosphere the bad acting left intact. The briefing scenes are also replaced by FMVs, which manage to look not even a little bit better than the former in-game one while being distorted by horribly fragmented compressions. The port does add a few new effects like better lighting and working mirrors. Ironically, early N64 preview screenshots showed off the latter, producing hilarious (in hindsight) captions like "mirrors are no problem for the power of the N64!" Texture quality, on the other hand, takes a nosedive on the 32-bit console, and the interior drawing distance is much shorter, covering the further ends of long corridors in darkness.

Both versions of course feature the famous Mission: Impossible theme, alongside some original tunes, which actually differ between platforms. Both soundtracks fall just a little bit short of excellent, featuring remnants of that distinct Euro chiptune charme, making the interruptions on the PSX even worse.

Mission: Impossible

So yeah, Mission: Impossible is not a very good stealth game. It's also not a good shooter, nor a good adventure game. Too unprecise are the controls, and one assumes the long and troubled development didn't exactly work in the game's favor. Still, it was made in a time where a concept of what a 3D stealth action game would have to be didn't exist—it was released before either Tenchu hit American shores or Metal Gear Solid was even finished, thus constituting Western gamer's first taste of this new genre. It's also not without its moments. In fact, there's a lot of them. Be it the quiet exploration of the embassy in Prague with its luscious architecture (by 1997/98 console game standards), the cool gunfight with Max' thugs in the train, where Ethan has to take care not to hit any civilians, who even can be taken hostage by the goons, and of course the rope scene. The two episodes of a completely unrelated mission in Siberia at the beginning and end feel tacked on, though, because they are. It's a flawed game full of great setpieces, and they are what makes Mission: Impossible worth checking out.

Of course this wasn't the last gamers heard of the Mission: Impossible franchise. Infogrames put out a GBC game the next year, as unrelated as uninspired. Many consider M:I - Operation Surma a spiritual sequel, since it features Ethan Hunt while not being based on any of the movies, and was published by Atari in their Infogrames-owned incarnation. It was made by an entirely different team at Paradigm Entertainment, though. (Yes, the Pilotwings 64 company. That should explain the screenshot below.)

Sources: Total! (Germany) 6/97 & 5/98; Computer & Video Games 8/97 (#189); Unseen64

Get more cheap thrills in Operation Surma