Konami Doing What Konami Does

While it is true that there was a television show of the same name running in 1990, it still feels weird to think that the NES got a Mission: Impossible game that year. The show started in 1988 and while initially quite successful (pulling in 23 Mil viewers and grabbing a 14.5 rating, 22 share at the time), awesome scheduling decisions quickly killed its momentum. By the time 1990 rolled around, the show’s audience was down to 11 Mil and with a 7.7/13 rating/share. ABC quickly cancelled it after, sensing the writing on the wall, and that was it for the show, as well as any version on television since.

Of course, looking back at it now feels so weird when shows are just happy to get a 2.3 share and have even a million people watching, but the 1980s were a different time for broadcast TV. If a show got even 7.7 Mil people watching now it’d be a number one series and would run for thirty years. Oh, while time will do to us all…

Regardless, Konami clearly snatched up the rights to Mission: Impossible when the series was riding high during its initial episodes. Konami of 1990 was really into licensed products, and if there was a good, successful license floating out there, they wanted it. This is all thanks to 1989’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which came out around the time that the Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesOriginally dreamed up as a parody of Marvel's Daredevil comics (going so far as to basically reproduce to opening shots of that comic's hero gaining his powers), the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles not only launched a sudden boom of anthropomorphic fighting animal comics but have, themselves, starred in multiple comics series, TV shows, and movies. were one of the hottest properties on the planet. Reportedly Konami didn’t realize just how big the franchise was going to become (they grabbed it after the debut of the 1987 cartoon, and had a game out before their 1990 film) but that first TMNT game went on to be one of the biggest NES games for the company. It completely changed what games they developed immediately after, not only when it came to design decisions (such as swappable characters each with special abilities) but also what games were green-lit. Many big franchises, like Castlevania, simply couldn’t compete, with Konami passing over more sequels for them and instead focusing on other licensed games.

And that gets us to the 1990 NES Mission: Impossible game, which feels like Konami throwing their whole bag of tricks at a license to see what sticks. The NES game is a top down action-shooter with some puzzle-solving and espionage elements. You play as three men on the Impossible Mission Force team, whose names I can’t remember but they boil down to big, strong guy with a gun; speedy, tech bro who punches, and weird dude with a boomerang. Your mission, should you choose to accept it (which, if you were playing the game, you did) was to infiltrate the bases of an evil organization all to try and find a missing scientist, and their assistant, and rescue the,

It is, to be frank, a bit of an odd game. In theory there’s nothing wrong with what Konami concocted. Top-down action games were certainly within the company’s wheelhouse, such as with the tank game Jackal (among others). They also were really good at action in general, with the company having a number of beloved action series – Castlevania, ContraStarted by Konami in 1988 the run-n-gun platform series Contra was, for a time, one of the flagship franchises for the company., Gradius – in their library. And, certainly, they’d already proven that the idea of switching between characters to use their skills and balance their health could work, like in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as well as Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. This game would seem to play on all their strengths. The reality, though, is quite the opposite. Mission: Impossible for the NES has two major flaws that keep it back from greatness. One, it’s not very fun to play, and two, it’s not a very good Mission: Impossible game regardless.

On the second count, it’s important to remember that this game came out in 1990, six years before the Mission: Impossible film series started up. While those films put the action front and center, with a lone hero venturing out to do it all, from running to shooting and then running whilst shooting, the television shows were very different. Instead of hardcore action, the episodes of the show played more like capers, with the heroes going in, pretending to be various people, planting tricks and traps, all so they could steal a file, or stop a nefarious plan, or rescue a person. They were methodical, albeit fun, and they had a very specific formula. Mission: Impossible, the NES game, doesn’t pay attention to any of that.

While, sure, there are occasional moments where your characters have to talk to people or collect a specific item, a good ninety-five percent of the game is run-and-gun action. There aren’t any capers, with no need to try and piece together a plan, or scuttle out a mystery. This isn’t a methodical game that suits what Mission: Impossible at the time was known for, but instead a thrill ride adventure that likely would have annoyed anyone at the time that was a fan of the television show. Could you make an NES game that suited the show better? Maybe. Likely not, but that just indicates more that maybe Konami shouldn’t have tried to adapt this franchise (at the time) for a system that couldn’t handle its storytelling.

And while it’s not a good adaptation of the source material of the period, Mission: Impossible is also supremely annoying to play. I think a lot of this is due to the top-down perspective which might work on shooters like Jackal. It doesn’t feel nearly as good when playing through maze-like, top-down dungeons that slow the pace and moderate what you can do. Mission: Impossible has a plodding pace that goes against the kind of play style the designers were clearly shooting for.

In a way it feels like they wanted to make a Metal Gear game – spies in a base, hunting around, flipping switches, and occasionally shooting enemies – but they didn’t get the formula right (probably because Hideo Kojima wasn’t in charge of this title). The emphasis is all wrong, prioritizing the slow, weird shooting sections over stealth action or espionage. I’m not even certain a Metal Gear game would be something that should be repurposed into a Mission: Impossible title, but at least we’re swinging in the same field in that case and it would suit the action, and the license, better.

The trouble is that this NES game doesn’t really commit to anything well. It has the three heroes, yes, but only one of them is useful for puzzles, the tech guy, and if you lose him you’re kind of screwed for the rest of the stage. The other two heroes are shooting guy or slightly faster shooting guy, and neither of those feel anywhere near as good to play as. It would have been nice to have more puzzle action with more reasons to use the other two heroes so that the inclusion of three heroes actually made sense from a gameplay perspective.

It also would be good if the game were designed in a way that you didn’t have to navigate spiralling, looping dungeons that have no sensible layout all because you have to find keys, or key cards, just to backtrack and get through one passage you have to remember from minutes earlier. This isn’t a game that lets you in and slowly gets you up to speed with how to play it. Instead it’s an obtuse and often frustrating experience where you’re/ regularly given no idea where to go or what order to do things, so you mindlessly wander around for hours until you either find the solution or give up.

And even that wouldn’t be quite so bad if the game were at all forgiving, but this game is classic “Nintendo Hard” with enemies and traps everywhere and not nearly enough health available to get through the stages. I died a lot playing through this game, to the point where I got angry at the game itself because I knew it didn’t need to be this hard but if Konami’s designers hadn’t designed it this way then you could have beaten it in an hour after renting it from a store and, well, they couldn’t have that. It’s just a frustrating experience.

Mission: Impossible on the NES is neither a good Mission: Impossible title nor a fun game in general. Played it because the eighth movie in the franchise is out and I wanted to have some fun going back and looking at past works. In this case, I really wish I hadn’t.