Missile Command is among the first arcade games to really take off and one of the first Atari 2600 games that created a compelling reason to buy that system, which I mean having an arcade game playable in your own home. The Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 version are listed in book The 100 Greatest Console Video Games 1977-1987 and the arcade version is listed in 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. You can play all three of these versions on the very good and recent game Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. An alternative is playing the arcade version on Antstream Arcade, which if you haven’t heard of it is a retro game streaming service.
When it came out, it was a time of great experimentation in arcade video games, and had a complicated input system with a trackball and buttons, which some people don’t even realize even though they’ve played extensively a port of the game. Purists might say the arcade cabinet with trackball is the real version, but since it’s so difficult to find a machine, there isn’t much reason to feel bad if you’re not able to do that.
Atari 50 and Missile Command Recharged are the currently available from Atari versions of this game. While Atari 50 has over 100 games, making it well worth the price, the Missile Command games in that version have been released before, and Missile Command Recharged is a whole new version of the game.
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