Missile Command Arcade Machine
Missile Command is a 1980 shoot ’em up arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and licensed to Sega for Japanese and European releases. It was designed by Dave Theurer, who also designed Atari’s vector graphics game Tempest from the same year.
Missile Command is a one or two-player game depicting the outbreak of a nuclear war.
Objective:
- To defend six cities from intercontinental ballistic missiles by launching anti-ballistic missiles from three bases.
Game Play:
- 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.
- Enemy weapons are only able to destroy a maximum of three cities per level.
- A level ends once all enemy missiles have either been destroyed or have reached their target.
- At the conclusion of a level, players receive bonus points for any remaining cities and unused missiles.
- Between levels, missile batteries are rebuilt and replenished, while destroyed cities are only rebuilt at set point thresholds.
- The game ends when all six cities are destroyed, unless the player scores enough points to earn a bonus city before the end of the level.
