Timeline | 1981: Missile Command for Atari 2600

Missile Command was another hit for Atari in both the Arcades and on the Atari 2600

Another game born of the Space Invaders craze that also became quite popular in its own right was 'Missile Command'. In Missile Command the player took the role of the commander of a regional missile defense grid with the goal of defending six cities from destruction as Nuclear ICBMs rained down from the sky. The initial premise made for fairly simple gameplay where the player used their own explosions to destroy the falling missles before they could hit the ground. After several rounds the game would get harder with the missiles falling faster, more often and in greater numbers and eventually doing things like splitting into multiple projectiles and coming from low flying planes, etc..

A screenshot of Missile Command for the Atari 2600

The Atari 2600 version of Missile Command came out in 1981 (just 1 year after the Arcade version) and continued the string of Arcade ports that were making the Atari 2600 very popular at the time. The Atari 2600 game's manual refers to the game taking place between two alien species, the defending Zardon and the attacking Krytol, although this is not in any of the documentation for the arcade version of the game. The Atari 2600 version also has an Easter Egg from its designer tucked away on the 13th level, the second Easter Egg ever (or at least known and admitted by Atari). Besides some graphical limitation the 2600 version of Missile Command is a decent representation of the Arcade classic and is still quite fun to play.

Further Reading:

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Command