Missile Command was originally released as an arcade game by Atari in 1980 and was one of the games that made arcades and Atari popular. The premise is pretty simple. Nuclear missiles are raining down on your cities and it is your job to shoot them down before they strike. I guess you could say it was the perfect Cold War era game.
Given its popularity it was an obvious candidate to port to Atari’s own home video game system, the Atari 2600, the following year. Not all arcade ports turned out well for the 2600 but this one was quite good and even better if you had a trackball. Missile Command became the third bestselling Atari 2600 game of all time. It was also released on various other systems throughout the years, sometimes in updated form, but the Atari 2600 is the one pictured above and the one that had the most success.
