Impossible Mission 2025 (MicroProse, 1994)

Impossible Mission 2025 for the Amiga (500, 600, AGA, non-AGA, CD-32, and whatever else you can think of) was conceived not as a true sequel, but effectively as a remake of the original game for its tenth anniversary. It was developed in the mid-1990s, a time when there was still no nostalgia for the 1980s and retrogaming as a concept simply did not exist. As a result, an “old” game — masterpiece or not — was expected to be reinvented using more modern technology and graphics. These premises largely explain the clumsiness and overall ugliness of the project, as well as the fact that it has aged far worse than its two classic predecessors.

It offers the option to choose between three characters (a feature that would return in the console editions of the first Impossible Mission released in the 2000s under the System 3 label, such as the Nintendo DS version), with little to no effect at all on the gameplay And above all this installment delivers a gameplay experience that betrays the original by introducing vast, scrolling areas.

 

I have despised this title from the very beginning, never once considering it a true Impossible Mission 3 (so much so that I went on to create my own version, strictly faithful to the first two games), and I was never able to play it for more than a few brief sessions. Only now, in the final days of the 2025 calendar year, I've decided to play it through properly for the first time, in order to honor the “ritual” of the fateful date before it was too late. Back then, 2025 felt like a distant year in the future — and now… it’s coming to an end.

My impressions, after overcoming more than thirty years of prejudice?

Well, there’s not much to say. I can’t stand it! It’s a shamelessly unplayable game, with awful controls, terrible gameplay, poor balancing, unfairly fast enemies, inadequate jumps, completely wrong movement inertia… a disaster. It contains every single element that a good game designer should NOT include when trying to make a mission “impossible.” It’s impossible for all the wrong reasons.

Absolutely not recommended to anyone, not even to die-hard nostalgic fans of the first two games. Just forget this abomination ever existed.