Extropia’s Retro Gaming: ‘The President Is Missing’

EXTROPIA’S RETRO-GAMING

“THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING”

Welcome to the first in an occasional series that digs up some old videogame and discusses it. These won’t necessarily be the classics that people might remember. In fact, chances are that you won’t have heard of some of them at all! Anyway, let’s get on with it.

I thought I would start by talking about a game for the Commodore 64 that was developed by Cosmi and published by Microprose and which came out around 1988. It was called ‘The President Is Missing’. As the name suggests, the game’s plot revolves around the kidnapping of the President of the United States (and not just him but also ten European heads of state) by terrorists. Unless their demands for (among other things) the destruction of the state of Israel and nationalisation of Islamic oil are met, the hostages will be killed. You play the role of Special Investigator to the Commission on Abduction and Terrorism and it’s your job to make sure the hostages are rescued and the terrorists brought to justice.

At this point you might be thinking, ‘Ok I know what this all entails, and that’s loading up with guns, grenades and rocket launchers and storming the terrorists’ base like I’m 007’. But actually, no. This whole game is played on a simulated computer screen, and your task is to sift through stacks of information in order to piece together the clues that will help determine where the President is being held captive. Cosmi described this as an ‘Interactive Graphics Adventure Simulation’.

Included with the game was an audio cassette that basically dramatised the kidnapping of the President and his subsequent reading out of their demands. By listening closely to this tape, you could pick up clues that could then be used to help solve the case. As for the simulated computer system, it provided you with various files, such as documents that held the text of official papers, photographs, and dossiers on all the characters. You also had up to eight agents under your control, and access to a decoding facility.

Although the game was played out entirely through simulated files, photographs and text-messages it managed to convey real tension, as you tried to solve the case while global events developed toward political chaos. And a special mention should go to the voice-acting on the audio cassette. Today we are used to great actors like Mark Hamill providing the voice for characters like ‘Joker’ in Rocksteady’s Batman series, but it’s worth remembering that once-upon-a-time, hardware was nowhere near powerful enough to accommodate megabytes of audio files along with the game. It’s also worth remembering that, in the early days when voice acting started to be included, it was usually borderline or outright dire. ‘The President Is Missing’ could very well be the first game in which spoken dialogue was a vital aspect of the game mechanics but was also very well acted.

The game was not perfect. It required tremendous attention to detail in order to pick up every clue, and the investigation was not helped by the fairly cumbersome navigation tools. But it was a pretty good graphic adventure game that probably gave a much more realistic representation of intelligence work than does the James Bond franchise.

Thanks to Cosmi for the pictures.