NES Mission Impossible

Ultra Games published "Mission Impossible" for the NES in 1990, bringing the long-running TV espionage franchise into 8-bit hardware for the first time. Ultra was Konami's secondary North American label, a publishing workaround that let Konami move more titles per year than Nintendo's third-party release limits allowed. The cartridge is the standard gray NES shell, label art heavy on action, three IMF agents rendered against a backdrop of explosions and frozen terrain.

Konami and its Ultra label were at a particular high point on NES by 1990. "Contra," "Castlevania II," "Super C," and "TMNT" had all come out in the two years prior, and Ultra was releasing enough titles that the Konami fingerprints were obvious to anyone paying attention. "Mission Impossible" fits squarely in that catalog not as a blockbuster but as a competent licensed action game with a multi-character mechanic that actually borrowed some of its structure from the TV series premise: you rotate through IMF agents, each with distinct abilities, working a single mission in stages. The original TV show ran from 1966 to 1973, and this game picked up the franchise name well before the Tom Cruise film era began. It was the kind of release that flew under the radar next to the Konami heavy hitters but held its own in the rental queue.

This copy presents as a loose cartridge, no box, no manual, which is standard for any NES game surviving more than three decades of attic shuffles and garage sale tables. The label is the thing to check. Early production labels on Ultra titles from this period can show edge lifting or color fade depending on storage conditions, and the gray shell is prone to yellowing at the seams if the cartridge spent time near direct light. The contacts inside should be clean for a reliable read. Run your thumb along the label edge at the bottom-right corner to feel whether the adhesive is lifting, because a peeling label is the first thing a serious buyer notices in hand.

OWNER VERIFY: Confirm the label is an Ultra Games label (not a Konami label variant) and that the cart is a standard gray NES shell with no shell cracks at the top edge.