Mission: Impossible TAS by laughing_gas
This is a TAS of the game Mission: Impossible for the Game Boy Color. In this game, you assume the role of Ethan Hunt in order to spy on enemies and thwart a generic "Evil guy tries to dominate the world" plan. The game was designed to be stealth-based like Metal Gear Solid, but as you will later see from this TAS, stealth is not high on my list of priorities.
Emulator Settings:
- Emulator used: VisualBoyAdvance 1.7.2 re-recording v19.2
- Allows Left+Right / Up+Down
Rom: Mission Impossible.gbc
Goals
- Aims for fastest time
- Abuses programming errors
- Takes damage to save time
Suggested screenshot
Level Details:
Mission 1
Not much to say about this level. There are few enemies and they're mostly scattered throughout the map. This game is quite linear, which means you have to complete the objectives in the order they are presented before you can continue. When I run back to the building after receiving instructions at the statue, I can enter the building through the wall because of a programming error.
Mission 2
When I'm inside the building, I take advantage of the fact that the guards can only see horizontally (but both front and back at the same time). As a result, I can diagonally strafe by them even after setting off several alarms.
Mission 3
Another straightforward level. Inside the building, the switches that I pull have inaccurate trigger zones, so it looks like I pulled some of them when I'm not standing in front of it.
Mission 4
This level is kind of annoying because the desert is filled with mines. When I come down after getting the explosives from the box, the reason I make a quick left strafe followed by a right strafe is so that I could avoid a mine, not because I was in danger of getting hit by the guy around the fence. Once inside the building, I walk straight into the enemy to follow to most direct path, that meant taking some damage. I couldn't take any more hits after this, so on the way out the building I abuse another programming error - the bullets don't travel much faster than I do, so I just dodge them.
Mission 5
This is where the enemies first start to pose a major threat, but also where my character starts to show off some moves. Since the guy in the brown suit (an agent, as I call him) blocks off the alley, I do a running spin-kick to take him out. The spin-kick move is only available when I'm close to an enemy. On the way to the building, I dodge some bullets and take down some more agents with spin-kicks. An interesting thing occurs if I try to scale the wall one frame too early. My character will be shown changing uniforms and throwing the hook up, but then he abruptly changes uniforms and doesn't climb up.
Even though I'm on the top of the building, the game engine still considers it to be on the same height level as the ground, but with different colors. As such, when I jump over the gap between the buildings, the agent on the ground can still punch me to death. To avoid this, I jumped, and midway through the jump I strafed left so the agent couldn't reach me.
Once inside the building, I climb down to the penultimate floor and then set the wiretap on the very first frame that my characters turns right. This results in him planting the wiretap while he is in midair.
The gray glass door outside the building takes me straight to ground level, but in this sense it is not really a warp. I didn't spin-kick the last agent because I would have died along with him, so I just dodged him.
Mission 6
This level was fun to do because I got to use stun grenades. If I get too close to an enemy, I just set one of these babies off and it'll freeze anybody visible on the screen.
Mission 7
While I'm picking up supplies, it looks like a guard hit me, but I moved one frame below his attack range. On the way back, I spin-kick a guard just for fun (doesn't waste any time)
Mission 8
To prevent myself getting killed by the guard moving back and forth between the two tables, I get close enough to activate his attack animation, then move a step back, and then go through him while his attack's still following through.
Since I pressed the action button as early as possible, it looks like my character is trying to pull something out of the air when he is supposed to be pulling it out of the cabinet.
Mission 9
This was a frustrating level because of the many guards present. I spin-kicked as many of them as I could, and dodged them if I couldn't.
Mission 10
This was the hardest level to do, not because of the large number of guards, but because the hallways were really narrow, which made dodging the guards almost impossible. I spin-kicked those that got in the way, and when I had more room I did some funny bullet dodging.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to
- Zurreco/Maur/bkDJ/VANDAL for helping me out with VBA problems
- nitsuja for adding re-recording ability for VBA
- Ali Bloomer for his very helpful guide on GameFAQs
Enjoy the run.
Bisqwit: Updated the submitted file with author's provided one, by the request thereof.
adelikat: The lack of viewers concerns me a little but it seems pretty typical of gbc games. The movie is nice and makes a solid contribution to the site. Accepting for publication, good job.
laughing_gas: I'll be self-encoding the avi, so official coders don't have to worry about this.
Bisqwit: Oh, you will? Well then, you need to read
EncoderGuidelines. Except that it's already encoded and published by
Maza...
