Missile Command is staged as a series of levels of increasing difficulty each level contains a set number of incoming enemy weapons. The missiles of the central battery fly to their targets at much greater speed only these missiles can effectively kill a smart bomb at a distance. There are three batteries, each with ten missiles a missile battery becomes useless when all its missiles are fired, or if the battery is destroyed by enemy fire. Counter-missiles explode upon reaching the crosshair, leaving a fireball that persists for several seconds and destroys any enemy missiles that enter it. The game is played by moving a crosshair across the sky background via a trackball and pressing one of three buttons to launch a counter-missile from the appropriate battery.

As a regional commander of three anti-missile batteries, the player must defend six cities in their zone from being destroyed. New weapons are introduced in later levels: smart bombs that can evade a less-than-perfectly targeted missile, and bomber planes and satellites that fly across the screen launching missiles of their own. The player’s six cities are being attacked by an endless hail of ballistic missiles, some of which split like multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles. Atari brought the game to its home systems beginning with the 1981 Atari VCS port by Rob Fulop which sold over 2.5 million copies. The cursor moves slightly choppy and slow, and the pace of the game is interrupted by disturbing pauses between levels.Missile Command is a 1980 shoot’em up arcade video game developed and published by Atari. In terms of gameplay, other than the differing city configuration, the Game Boy Color rendition plays similar enough to the original to make retrogaming folks happy. After that, you're treated to a stupid little animation specific to the location (like a waving kangaroo for Australia, for example).Įven though the game is written specifically for the Game Boy Color (it won't work on black & white systems), it doesn't look like it really takes advantage of the system's abilities ¿ colors seem very washed out, and explosions are extremely difficult to see against the blue skies of certain cities. You change locations after protecting each one for two rounds. Honestly, this configuration is enough to throw even the most seasoned Missile Command players for a loop.Īnother change: the cities you're protecting are now part of tangible, real locations, such as New York, Paris, Cairo, and Sydney. Now, it's one city, missile base, four cities, missile base, one city. So instead of the familiar three cities, missile base, three cities configuration, it's been changed. Because of the two button configuration on the Game Boy Color system, the designer(s) didn't create three missile bases to fire from. If you've familiarized yourself with the original Missile Command games in the Arcade or on the Atari systems, you may want to throw the strategies you've learned out the window.

The game has been ported to many systems, including the Atari 2600, 5200, Jaguar and Atari Lynx. The game ends when your six cities are taken out by the enemy missiles. If your cloud engulfs a missile, it's destroyed.

The idea was simple ¿ protect your six cities from an onslaught of descending missiles by maneuvering a cursor and firing your own defensive weaponry.

Just a brief classic gaming lesson ¿ Missile Command originally came out in the arcade in 1980. Modernized rendition of the classic arcade game.

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