Missile Command

The Good
What's not to love about this game ? I'm sure every gamer at some point has played it.

Gameplay-

As stated earlier, it's almost impossible to find fault with a game so simple. You have control of a spot that shoots missiles to shoot down incoming hostile missiles. Simple enough. But you have be on your toes because the missiles aren't interested in you, but your cities. You have six cities to protect. Once all those cities are destroyed, game over. But it speeds up with each level. Right about now if you're saying, "No sweat ! I'll have this beat in no time !", then you're a twit. Obviously this is the kind of game that tends to almost go on forever (my best is 13,000 something), but from what I've read it has a glitch that stops somewhere around 2,000,000. But it would take superhuman reflexes to go that high. Still, it's fun, and has great replay value. Thumbs up here !

Sound-

Err, how to say, not much. The missiles, and city explosions all sound good. So hard to describe this music is, dwell on it any longer I will not. (Yes I recently watched Star Wars if you're wondering about that last line.)

Graphics-

Decent for the 2600. I like the little mushroom clouds when the missiles hit the cities. The graphics aren't much different from the arcade version except for the detail level. You can clearly make out all the objects in the game without confusion. That is somewhat rare in a 2600 game.

Control-

You move with a joy stick and press the fire button. I'm not even going to try and elaborate the control set-up. It's too incredibly obvious how it works.

One last note-

Like Space Invaders before it, it taps into that fear of nuclear war and invasion like few games have before or since. Yes the graphics are crude, and the sound minimal, but that doesn't make it any less tense than a game today. I'm surprised that few games like it have been made since. Although I suppose if more games were like it they would pretty pessimistic. Oh well.

The Bad
Control-

The target dot could have been faster. That's it.

The Bottom Line
This is the type of game anyone can play. So play it ! Now ! You'll love it ! Or have dreams of nuclear missile filled skies. Hm..what's that rumbling ?

The Good
- Great combination of coordination and speed needed in this game.
- You don't have time to make sure that your shot hits so good aiming is needed
- If you get better you can destroy 2 or 3 rockets together if you aim at a point where their course is crossing
- You have to protect 6 cities; if one is destroyed you can ignore rockets which aim there adding some tactics in later levels
- Even with all cities destroyed you can sometimes continue if you reach enough bonus points so that you get a new city


The Bad
Nothing.

The Bottom Line
An even today challenging game in which the large amount of fast moving rockets and bombs means that you have to show your optimum in protecting the cities by shooting them down as fast as you can.