Missile Command

Missile Command for the Atari 2600 is Atari's 1981 home conversion of the arcade defense game, programmed for the VCS by Rob Fulop. Rather than identify real-world nations, this version frames its conflict as an assault by Krytol on the peaceful planet Zardon. As Zardon's base commander, the player attempts to keep six cities alive while hostile interplanetary ballistic missiles descend from the sky.

The Atari 2600 game uses the system's joystick rather than the arcade cabinet's trackball. Moving the stick guides a blinking target cursor in eight directions, and the fire button sends an antiballistic missile to the selected point. A well-placed blast can stop a threat before it reaches a city or the launch base, and the player can send up to three defensive missiles at once by moving on to another target instead of waiting for an earlier shot to finish.

A wave begins with a supply of 30 antiballistic missiles. The central launch base visibly holds ten at a time, with further sets supplied from the underground dump as those are spent. Enemy hits can destroy the launch base and its current contents, though missiles left in the dump remain available. The overall game ends when every city has been destroyed, making careful target placement and ammunition use essential even when an individual wave cannot be cleared perfectly.

Threats grow more demanding as the waves advance. Alongside ballistic missiles, the manual introduces cruise missiles after the sixth wave; some travel straight, while smart cruise missiles try to avoid defensive explosions. Later, faster attacks raise both the pressure and the score value. Points come from destroying enemy missiles, preserving cities, and leaving antiballistic missiles unused, while every 10,000 points awards a bonus city that can return a player to the defense.

Missile Command Atari 2600 includes 34 selectable variations. Games 1 through 17 are for one player and games 18 through 34 let two players take turns as commander, one wave at a time. Variations alter the starting wave, target-control speed, and the kind of cruise missiles encountered. The console difficulty switches further affect the challenge, and the two children's games slow the action, use less threatening cruise missiles, and provide a gentler entry point.

The cartridge preserves the escalating, score-driven structure of Missile Command while adapting it around a single joystick-controlled base and the capabilities of the Atari 2600. Its science-fiction framing, selectable challenge options, alternating two-player play, and rapid cursor-and-fire rhythm give this 1981 version its own identity within Atari's long-running Missile Command lineage.