Missile Command
| Missile Command | |
|---|---|
North American arcade flyer
|
|
| Developer(s) | Atari, Inc. |
| Publisher(s) |
Taito (Japan) |
| Designer(s) | Dave Theurer |
| Platform(s) | Arcade (original) Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, Game Boy, Lynx |
| Release |
Arcade
Atari 8-bit 1981 Atari 5200
|
| Genre(s) | Shoot 'em up |
| Mode(s) | Up to 2 players, alternating turns |
| Cabinet | Upright, cabaret, cocktail, and cockpit |
| CPU | M6502 (@ 1.25 MHz) |
| Sound | POKEY (@ 1.25 MHz) |
| Display | Raster, 256×231, horizontal orientation, palette colors 8 |
Missile Command is a 1980 arcade game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and licensed to Sega for European release. It was designed by Dave Theurer, who also designed Atari's vector graphics game Tempest from the same year. The 1981 Atari 2600 port of Missile Command by Rob Fulop sold over 2.5 million copies and became the third most popular cartridge for the system.
The player's six cities are being attacked by an endless hail of ballistic missiles, some of them even splitting like multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs). 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 and launch missiles of their own. As a regional commander of three anti-missile batteries, the player must defend six cities in their zone from being destroyed.
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. Counter-missiles explode upon reaching the crosshair, leaving a fireball that persists for several seconds and destroys any enemy missiles that enter it. 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. 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.
The game is staged as a series of levels of increasing difficulty; each level contains a set number of incoming enemy weapons. The weapons attack the six cities, as well as the missile batteries; being struck by an enemy weapon results in destruction of the city or missile battery. Enemy weapons are only able to destroy three cities during one level. A level ends when all enemy weaponry is destroyed or reaches its target. A player who runs out of missiles no longer has control over the remainder of the level. At the conclusion of a level, the player receives bonus points for any remaining cities or unused missiles. Between levels missile batteries are rebuilt and replenished; destroyed cities are rebuilt only at set point levels (usually every 10,000 or 12,000 points).
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Wikipedia