Missile Command

Missile Command
Screenshot of the Missile Command arcade game
Developer(s)	Atari Inc.
Publisher(s)	Atari Inc.
Designer(s)	Dave Theurer
Platform(s)	Arcade
Release	July 1980
Genre(s)	Shoot 'em up
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players, alternating turns

Missile Command is a 1980 arcade game by Atari Inc. that was also licensed to Sega for European release. The plot of Missile Command is simple: 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), and in later levels smart bombs which can evade a less than perfectly targeted missile. As a regional commander of three anti-missile batteries, the player must defend six cities in their zone from being destroyed.

Gameplay

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. 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 3 cities during one level. A level ends if all the cities are destroyed, or when all enemy weaponry is destroyed or reaches its target. If a player should run out of missiles, he 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 not rebuilt, but at set point levels (usually 10 or 12K) a bonus city is awarded.

The game inevitably ends when all six cities have been wiped out. Like most early arcade games, there is no way to "win" the game; the game just keeps going with ever faster and more prolific incoming missiles. The game, then, is just a contest in seeing how long the player can survive. On conclusion of the game, the screen displays "The End", perhaps a poke at oncoming Nuclear Holocaust rather than the standard "Game Over" text (however, if the player is able to make the high score list, the game then prompts the player to enter his/her initials, with the "The End" sequence skipped).

The game features an interesting bug: once a score of 810,000 is reached, a large number of cities are awarded (150 cities plus the continuing accrual of bonus cities) and it is possible to carry on playing for several hours. At some later stage the speed of missiles increases greatly for a few screens. On the 255th and 256th yellow screens, known as the 0x stages, the scoring increases by 256 times the base value. For good players these two 0x stages could earn over a million points, this enabled them to reach a score of approximately 2,800,000 (although only 6 digit scores were shown, so it would display 800,000) and at this point the accelerated rate would suddenly cease and the game would restart at its original (slow) speed and return to the first stage, but with the score and any saved cities retained. In this way it was possible to play this game for hours on end. The world marathon record, set in 1983 by Victor Ali, is 80,000,000 points.

Production

When the game was originally designed, the six cities were meant to represent six cities in California: Eureka, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego.

While programming Missile Command, the programmer, Dave Theurer, suffered from nightmares.

Reception

Missile Command was an immensely popular money-maker for Atari, with many units around the world still outperforming contemporary machines' revenue as late as the mid-1990s.

Missile Command is considered one of the great classic video games from the Golden Age of Arcade Games. The game is also interesting in its manifestation of the Cold War's effects on popular culture, in that the game features an implementation of National Missile Defense and parallels real life nuclear war. (See Culture during the Cold War for more information on this.)

Ports

Atari 5200 Missile Command

Xbox 360 Missile Command

Missile Command was ported to the Atari 2600. The game's instruction manual describes a war between two planets: Zardon (the defending player) and Krytol. The original arcade game contains no reference to these worlds. On level 13, if the player uses all of his or her missiles without scoring any points, at the end of the game the city on the right will turn into "RF" -- the initials of the programmer Rob Fulop. This Easter egg is originally documented in Atari Age (Volume 1, Issue 2) in a letter to the editor by Joseph Nickischer, and is the second one publicly acknowledged by Atari.

In the 1990s, Missile Command was ported to handheld systems such as the Atari Lynx and Game Boy.

On the Atari Jaguar, there is also Missile Command 3D. It contains three versions of the game: Classic, 3D, and Virtual. The last version is the only game that works with the virtual reality helmet from Virtuality (only 2 pieces are known to exist).

Having just acquired the Atari label, Hasbro Interactive released Microsoft Windows and Sony PlayStation versions in 1999, but they did not sell well. Hasbro Interactive released a series of Atari classic remakes around that time, most of which quickly found their way to the discount bin.

Missile Command was released via Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360 on July 4 2007 for 400 Microsoft Points ($5 USD). It features updated, high-definition graphics.

Legacy

In 1981, an enhancement kit was made by General Computer Corp. to convert Missile Command into Super Missile Attack. This made the game even harder, and added a UFO to the player's enemies.

In 1982, a multi-player sequel was planned but never released. This game would have been identical to the first except with twice as many cities and batteries and the players cooperating to save each other's cities from the onslaught.

In 1984, Atari released a game called Liberator, which was seen by some as being a variation of Missile Command with the situation essentially reversed; in Liberator, the player is the one attacking the planetary bases.

In 1992, Atari developed a prototype of an arcade game called Arcade Classics for their 20th anniversary. The game included Missile Command 2 and Super Centipede (an updated version of the original Centipede).

John Braden recorded two different stories for Kid Stuff Records detailing the peaceful world of Zardon and the invasion of the Krytolians. The 12" album tells the broader story, beginning with an emergency meeting in which the Zardonian public learns of the threat for the first time. It has two songs, a title track and "Zardon Commanders". The 7" tells a smaller, more specific story.

Clones

The game has been widely cloned. For example, there is an open source/SDL game with the same rules as Missile Command called Penguin Command, and an Amiga clone.

Record breaking gameplay

On 9 March 2006, Tony Temple (AKA "TT"), a UK based gamer, set a new world record for Missile Command in Tournament mode on tournament settings confirmed by Twin Galaxies. Tournament settings give the player no bonus cities, and is considered to be one of the most difficult video games of the Golden Era. His score of 1,967,830 points beat the record previously held by US Gamer Roy Shildt for more than 20 years. Shildt maintains that he played using slightly different settings to Temple, even though the particular setting he refers to would not have been monitored at the time he set his record; this according to the official Guinness manuals from that era. Temple's record has been recognized by the Official Video Game & Pinball Book Of World Records and is listed in the 2007 Guinness Book Of Records, as well as the Guinness Gamers Edition Book 2008. Shildt and Temple remain the two most prominent current Missile Command players using tournament settings, and a match up is eagerly anticipated by the classic arcade community.

Missile Command in popular culture

Missile Command was referenced in a 1981 episode of the TV sitcom Barney Miller, which featured a young detective who was hooked on the game.

In the 1991 sci-fi action film Terminator 2: Judgment Day, protagonist John Connor is seen playing Missile Command in a video arcade, a homage to what he does in the future as a military commander. The game itself was also part of the film's theme: a nuclear holocaust.

The award winning documentary High Score follows William Carlton, a Portland, Oregon gamer, on his quest to beat the Missile Command high score record for Marathon settings.(2006)

See also

• Bio-ship Paladin
• D-CON a spin-off of Missile Command

External links

• Missile Command at the Killer List of Videogames
• Atari's official online version of Missile Command
• Template:StrategyWiki
• Missile Command at MobyGames
• Arcade History Database enty
• Category at ODP