20 Worst Game Breaking Bugs & Glitches

20. Mission: Impossible - Impossible Mission (1984)

Despite the absence of modern consoles like the PlayStation or Xbox, the eighties is seen as the foundational decade for modern video gaming, giving us Super Mario, Donkey Kong and other all-time classics that have lived on far beyond their 8-bit origins. But progress continues in spite of those it leaves behind, and the decade saw many casualties in both game IPs and the consoles they were played on.

One such relic of the mid-eighties is Impossible Mission, a roguelike game that definitely, no way, wasn’t at all based on the hit TV show Mission: Impossible - and shame on you for suggesting as much. Originally released on the Commodore 64, the game lets players step into the shoes of a secret agent tasked with preventing evil genius Dr Elvin Atombender from blowing up the world, with just six hours on the clock.

Impossible Mission was well received by gamers and critics alike, so much so that the game was ported to other systems in the years following release, including the Atari 7800. Unfortunately for players in the NTSC region (the Americas), the game is genuinely impossible. It features a bug that places some of the cards required to complete its puzzles behind computer terminals, which can’t be searched (you are forced to access the terminal instead). And as it’s a stage-based game, if you can’t get past any mission or puzzle, you can’t continue playing.