MISSILE COMMAND

WHAT THIS IS

A faithful reconstruction, not an impression. The wave counts, missile speeds, smart-bomb budgets, flier cadences and the ten rotating colour sets are read straight from Andy McFadden’s annotated disassembly of the 1980 ROM — wave 1 sends 12 ICBMs at one pixel every 4.8 frames; wave 15 sends 18 at one pixel per frame and never gets slower again.

Theurer built it in six months from a one-line brief: a radar screen, missiles inbound. He refused to name either country and refused to let you attack — “I did not want to put the player in a position of being a genocidal maniac.” He had nuclear nightmares for a year afterwards. It was the first colour game Atari ever shipped, and roughly 20,000 cabinets went out.

THE RULES BEHIND THE RULES

• 3 CITIESThe wave ends the instant enemy fire destroys three cities — remaining ICBMs in the budget are simply never launched.
• MIRVA splitting warhead counts all three heads against the wave budget. Good players stall the shot until the split, spending one ABM on three tracks.
• WAVE 9Smart-bomb evasion changes: the code starts always flagging “explosion above”, so bombs can no longer climb away from you.
• NO WINWaves 20+ are permanently wave-19 difficulty. The screen says THE END, not GAME OVER.

SCORING

• ICBM25 × multiplier
• SMART BOMB125 × multiplier
• BOMBER / SAT100 × multiplier
• CITY LEFT100 × multiplier, at wave end
• ABM UNUSED5 × multiplier, at wave end
• BONUS CITYevery 10,000 points, held in reserve

ON FILM

• REV 1Arcade longplay, revision 1
• REV 2Arcade longplay, revision 2
• 4KCabinet gameplay in 4K
• ROMThe full 6502 disassembly
• RECORDTony Temple, 1,967,830 — and Jody Bowles’ 41,399,845 across 30 hours on a single quarter, 1981.