Realm of Impossibility | 1983

Realm of Impossibility is an action game developed by Mike Edwards for the Atari 8-bit computer and published by Electronic Arts in 1984. Originally, it was released as Zombies in 1983 by BRAM, a company founded by Edwards and a friend. Before this, BRAM had developed and published Attack for EP-CYG-4.

Electronic Arts ported Realm of Impossibility to the Apple II and Commodore 64, while the ZX Spectrum version was published by Ariolasoft in 1985.

The player must explore 13 dungeons, collecting 7 crowns to defeat the evil priest Wistrik.

Each dungeon consists of up to 12 individual rooms, and the game transitions from one room to another as the player reaches the edge of the screen. Players explore rooms to find treasures, whether they are crowns or keys to unlock deeper dungeons.

Rooms are filled with zombies, snakes, spiders, and other unkillable creatures. The joystick button drops crosses that block these creatures. A maximum of 12 crosses can appear at once, and they slowly disappear over time.

Players can collect scrolls and use them to cast spells by pressing the first letter of the spell’s name on the keyboard.

• Freeze: Temporarily stops monsters in their place.
• Protect: Makes the player immune to damage for a short period.
• Confuse: Causes monsters to wander aimlessly in confusion.

Two players can cooperate on the same screen. In this mode, the number of crosses that can appear doubles. Both players must reach the edge of the screen to move to the next room.

Edwards originally worked at Boeing. After changing jobs and no longer programming professionally, he became interested in the home computer market as a way to continue programming. At a local computer store, Edwards became captivated by Star Raiders and purchased an Atari. After some time with the machine, he began programming with Atari BASIC and sold a simple tax-avoidance program locally.

He later began programming his first game, Attack at EP-CYG-4, a two-player shooting game. It was licensed by another company and sold on cartridge, with Edwards assisting in the porting process. Following this, he began work on a maze game, and upon his partner's suggestion, added 3D effects, resulting in Zombies. The game featured increasingly complex levels, with the final level, "The Realm of Impossibility," including optical illusions similar to those popularized by artist M.C. Escher.

The success of the original release led Don Daglow to acquire the rights for Electronic Arts. Several minor changes were made to the game, with new levels added and a soundtrack composed by Dave Warhol, who had previously worked with Daglow on Intellivision game design. The game was officially renamed Mike Edwards' Realm of Impossibility and released shortly after the original BRAM version, with the box cover labeling it a "Deluxe Edition of The Classic Game Zombies."

Realm of Impossibility became part of the "third wave" of titles introduced by Electronic Arts since its founding in 1982, marking it as one of their innovative game titles.