Missile Command

Missile Command
North American arcade flyer
Developer(s)	Atari, Inc.
Publisher(s)	NA Atari Inc. EU Sega
Designer(s)	Dave Theurer
Platform(s)	Arcade
Release date(s)	Arcade NA July, 1980 EU 1980 Atari 2600 NA 1980 EU 1980
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)

Missile Command is a 1980 arcade game by Atari, Inc. that was also licensed to Sega for European release. It is considered one of the most notable games from the Golden Age of Video Arcade Games. 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. 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 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. 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 10 or 12K).

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.

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.^[1]

While programming Missile Command, the programmer, Dave Theurer, suffered from nightmares of these cities being destroyed by a nuclear blast.^[2][3]

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

Missile Command for the Atari 5200

Missile Command for the Xbox 360

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.

Missile Command was also ported to Atari's line of 8-bit computers. That version was also used in the Atari XEGS as a built-in game that boots up if there isn't a cartridge or keyboard in the console.^[4]

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 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 (US$5). It features updated, high-definition graphics.

On September 23, 2008, Missile Command was released for the iPhone and iPod touch though the App Store for US$5. Features include two gameplay modes ("Ultra" and "Classic"), online high score rankings, variable difficulty, and the option to use the iPod function to play music instead of using the included game soundtrack.

Missile Command was made available on Microsoft's Game Room service for its Xbox 360 console and for Windows-based PCs in June 2010.

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 although at least one prototype appeared in an arcade in santa clara, California. 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 sequel to Missile Command with the situation essentially reversed; in Liberator, the player is the one attacking planetary bases from orbit.

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.

OMGPOP released an online multi-player game inspired by the original version, in 2010.

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^[5]

Record-breaking gameplay

Two types of world record are monitored for the arcade version of Missile Command: Marathon settings and Tournament settings. Both settings allow the player to start with a full complement of six cities. Marathon settings give the player additional bonus cities, typically at every 10,000 points scored. Because of this, seasoned players can play the game, in theory, indefinitely. Marathon players will play until their game ends – either due to the game ending, fatigue or mechanical breakdown. In tournament mode, no bonus cities are awarded at any point in the game – the game will end when all six cities are destroyed.

Marathon settings:

In 1981, Floridan Jody Bowles played a Missile Command arcade game for 30 hours at The Filling Station Eatery in Pensacola. Bowles racked up 41,399,845 points with only one quarter using regular "Marathon Settings", besting the previous known record, according to Atari spokesman Mike Fournell.^[6] The official world marathon record is recorded as 80,364,995 points and is credited to Victor Ali of the USA, this score set in 1982. It is believed Ali played the game continuously for 56 hours. The only current challenger to the marathon world record is William Carlton of Portland, Oregon. Despite numerous attempts in recent years, Carlton has yet to top Ali's score.

Tournament settings:

On March 9, 2006, Tony Temple, a UK based gamer, set a new world record for Missile Command in Tournament mode on tournament settings confirmed by Twin Galaxies. Because tournament settings give the player no bonus cities, it 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 was recognized by the Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records and was listed in the 2007 Guinness Book of Records, as well as the Guinness Gamers Edition Book 2008. Tony Temple has subsequently increased his world record on two occasions, culminating in a score of 4,472,570 verified on 9 September 2010. This score took 2 hours 57 minutes, and represents the first officially verified time that a player has passed the killscreen at wave 256 on Missile Command under tournament settings. His nearest rival, Jeffrey Blair, posted a score of 1,874,925 also in 2010. Shildt now sits in third place. Temple, Shildt and Blair remain the three most prominent Missile Command players using tournament settings, and a live match-up is eagerly anticipated by the classic arcade community.^[7]

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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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)^[8]
• In the 2008 episode "Chuck Versus Tom Sawyer" of the NBC show Chuck, a weapons satellite access code is hidden in the (fictitious) kill screen of Missile Command by its programmer. The show's title character retrieves the code by achieving a score of 2,000,000 points after realizing that "the mathematical pattern underlying the game is the same" as Rush's 1981 hit "Tom Sawyer".^[9]
• In the 1982 movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Missile Command's "The End" screen is used to help illustrate the film's ending.^[10]
• Missile Command was played by John Connor in the 1991 movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
• Talk show host Ellen Degeneres gave actor Seth Rogen an arcade version of Missile Command as a wedding gift on her talk show "The Ellen Degeneres Show".

Film

In February 2010, Atari announced that it was talking with several studios to find one that would turn Missile Command into a movie. [1] On Jan. 11, 2011, 20th Century Fox announced that it had acquired the rights to bring Missile Command to film. [2]

References

1. ^ "Missile Command — StrategyWiki, the free strategy guide and walkthrough wiki". Strategywiki.org. 2010-03-29. http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Missile_Command. Retrieved 2010-06-02. 
2. ^ Blue Wizard Is About To Die!, Pg. 140, Seth Flynn Barkan, ISBN 0-9741000-0-5
3. ^ Extra Credits. Narrative Mechanics
4. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=PnPRd6QwvbQC&pg=PA353&dq=ATari+XE+Game+System+missile+command&hl=en&ei=C1rUTYjmKMLIgQes_Mgu&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CF4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=ATari%20XE%20Game%20System%20missile%20command&f=false
5. ^ The SourceForge page for Penguin Command, a Missile Command clone
6. ^ Man Plays Video Game 30 Hours To Win Record With One Quarter. Ocala Star-Banner. 4 May 1981.
7. ^ WayOfTheRodent.com
8. ^ "HIGH SCORE - About the Film - Synopsis". Highscoremovie.com. http://www.highscoremovie.com/about-synopsis.html. Retrieved 2010-06-02. 
9. ^ "Chuck Versus Tom Sawyer Season Episode Guide on". Tv.com. http://www.tv.com/chuck/chuck-versus-tom-sawyer/episode/1220455/summary.html. Retrieved 2010-06-02. 
10. ^ "Atari's Missile Command, a potential Hollywood franchise". Los Angeles Times. 2010-02-18. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/missile-command/. Retrieved 2010-06-26. 

External links

• Missile Command at the Killer List of Videogames
• Missile Command at MobyGames
• Missile Command guide at StrategyWiki
• Twin Galaxies Rankings for Missile Command
• Arcade History Database enty
• Missile Command at the Open Directory Project