Missile Command (1980). Play online

Summary

Missile Command drops you into a tense command post, where three anti‑missile batteries guard six cities under a relentless barrage of ballistic missiles. Using a fast trackball you slide a cross‑hair across a night‑sky backdrop and fire missiles that explode in glowing fireballs, clearing anything that flies through. Some enemy rockets split mid‑flight like MIRVs, forcing you to juggle limited ammunition—each battery starts with ten shots and the center launchers travel faster, able to intercept the smart‑bombs that appear later.

As you survive each wave, new threats emerge: bomber planes and orbiting satellites streak across the screen, dumping their own payloads, while smart bombs dart toward any target with razor precision. Bonus cities can be earned at score milestones and sit in reserve to replace destroyed ones, and a multiplier climbs to 6× after the second level, inflating every point you collect.

The cabinet’s glowing side panels and Atari’s first full‑color graphics give the game a futuristic feel, but the gameplay loop never really ends—missiles grow faster and more numerous until all six cities are lost, and the screen calmly reads “The End,” a reminder that there is no true winner.

Storyline

Missile Command, the classic 1980 arcade shooter, drops you into a Cold‑War‑era radar screen where six American cities are under attack by intercontinental ballistic missiles. Your job is to launch anti‑missile batteries to intercept the incoming warheads before they strike. The arcade cabinet offers no backstory beyond this defensive scenario, leaving the narrative to the player’s imagination.

The Atari 2600 version’s manual adds a sci‑fi twist, framing the conflict as a war between the planet Zardon, which you defend, and the hostile world Krytol. That planetary storyline never appears in the original arcade game.