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Missile Command

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Missile Command was produced by Atari in 1980. Aliens from the planet of Krytol are attacking your cities! As the commander of a missile base, it is your responsibility to defend them. A variety of enemy weapons and planes will be incoming trying to destroy the six cities at the bottom of the ...

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Developer
Atari

Released on
1980

Size
1–2 Players

Version
Arcade

Requirements
Arcade

Downloads
Shooter

ESRB Rating
Not Rated

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Description

Missile Command was produced by Atari in 1980.

Aliens from the planet of Krytol are attacking your cities! As the commander of a missile base, it is your responsibility to defend them. A variety of enemy weapons and planes will be incoming trying to destroy the six cities at the bottom of the screen. You need to fire missiles to destroy the incoming weapons. If anything gets through, one of your cities could be destroyed. When all of the cities are gone, the game is over. On each level you have a limited amount of ammo, so make sure most (if not all) of your shots are accurate or you could run out of ammo and leave your cities at risk! As the levels progress, there are more and more enemy weapons to destroy which come in at an increasingly faster rate.

Missile Command

Overview & History

Released by Atari, Inc. in July 1980 and designed by Dave Theurer, Missile Command stands as an enduring monument to Cold War anxiety and arcade mastery. Set in the fictional planet of Zardon, the narrative thrusts the player into a grim, high-stakes defensive scenario where six defenseless California-style cities are subjected to relentless nuclear bombardment by an aggressor from the planet Krytos. Unlike many of its contemporaries that offered offensive glory, Missile Command was designed as a psychological endurance test with an inevitable, tragic conclusion: no matter how skillfully you defend, the game always ends with the haunting 'THE END' screen fading over a desolate, scorched wasteland. Its development was deeply influenced by Theurer's recurring nightmares of nuclear annihilation, lending the cabinet an authentic, chilling atmosphere that captured the cultural zeitgeist of the era.

Gameplay Features & Mechanics

The core gameplay revolves around protecting your six cities and three anti-ballistic missile (ABM) bases from an escalating deluge of incoming enemy ordnance, including ICBs, smart bombs, and fast-moving MIRVs (Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles). Players utilize a trackball to pilot a crosshair across the night sky, firing counter-missiles from the left, center, or right silos. The primary strategic mechanic is spatial and temporal anticipation; because your interceptor missiles take time to travel to their target coordinates, you must detonate them ahead of the incoming trajectory, creating expanding circular fireballs that destroy enemy warheads caught in the blast radius. Ammunition is strictly finite per wave, forcing resource management, and if your missile bases are destroyed, you are left completely defenseless until the round concludes. Periodic bonus points are awarded based on surviving cities and unused missiles, which occasionally replenish a destroyed city.