The History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects #4: Impossible Mission and Tapes

On the occasion of my upcoming book Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer, I am writing The History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects, posted weekly from November 1^st, 2024:

“Another Visitor. Stay a while, stay forever!“

The hammy voice of the evil scientist greets the player. The 1984 Impossible Mission by Dennis Caswell at Epyx was a technical marvel when it came out.

The “Another Visitor” sample and the “Destroy Him by Robots!” sample were shocking because the Commodore 64 did not have any facility for playing sampled sound. The sample was played by quickly changing the volume of the sound chip, creating clicks of different volume. The animation, based on pictures from a book about athletics, was fluid and expressive, combining multiple high-resolution sprites of different color.

Sound and graphics were amazing and high tech, exploiting and showcasing your C64’s abilities, making it the game you would show visiting friends to cement that yes, the C64 was the most advanced game platform.

The game, on the other hand, was painfully difficult. You die constantly by falling down, running out of time, or merely grazing an enemy robot. This was normal. Yet Impossible Mission was also inspired by Rogue, and the layout of the levels was randomized at every playthrough, which did not really become mainstream until the release of Spelunky in 2008.

Impossible Mission came on tapes or floppy disks. The exciting-looking box evoked sci-fi and the cold war and the pictures were – as everybody understood – nothing like the actual game. Inside the box was a manual, as was the custom, and the tape itself.

To play the game, you’d put the tape into Commodore Datasette deck, rewinding the tape before typing “LOAD” and pressing play.

(Photo by Evan-Amos, public domain).

Most users also had stacks of regular audio tapes onto which pirated software had been recorded, and the little counter on the Datasette was paramount for finding the location where the game was stored, noting the location on the tape inlay. If you had a tape deck, you would do this a lot.

(Imgur)

Some radio stations even broadcast C64 programs on air, giving a wall of modem-like screeches to be recorded on a regular tape recorder, and then inserted in the Datasette.

What are your memories of games and tapes?

 

Coming November 29^th:  Object #5 – Zzap!64 and other magazines.