Dennis Caswell‘s brilliant 1984 platform game, Impossible Mission, has lost little of its appeal over the decades. There is something so gloriously timeless about it, and the challenge it presents is difficult, but do-able.

From the moment you first hear the sampled speech (“Another visitor! Stay awhile. Stay… forever!“), and see your agent somersaulting across the screen, you will be drawn into this spy-theme action game.

The idea is simple enough: you must avoid all the dangers, while searching the offices of mad scientist Professor Elvin Atombender, for pieces of a missing code. And when you have the pieces you must fit them together in a kind of jigsaw puzzle type fashion in order to get the access password to defeat the mad doctor. There are 36 pieces of the puzzle, and you have four hours in which to complete your mission.

Is it really an impossible situation you’re facing? I guess that depends on how good at games you are…

More: Impossible Mission on Wikipedia