Missile Command is Atari's 1980 arcade defense game about using a trackball and three missile bases to protect cities from incoming attacks.
Missile Command is an arcade game developed and published by Atari in 1980. Designed around nuclear-age anxiety and rapid spatial judgment, it asks players to defend six cities from waves of ballistic missiles, smart bombs, planes, and satellites.
The arcade cabinet uses a trackball to move a targeting cursor and three fire buttons tied to missile batteries on the left, center, and right of the screen. Each shot launches a defensive missile that explodes after a short delay, so players must lead incoming targets and choose which battery can intercept them in time.
Every wave ends with bonus points for unused missiles and surviving cities. Destroyed cities can return as score bonuses, but the game ultimately continues until the player can no longer protect any city from the escalating attack patterns.
The visual design is stark: colored missile trails descend over a black background toward simple city silhouettes. That clarity makes the screen readable at arcade speed while giving each failure a direct emotional weight as a city disappears from the bottom of the playfield.
Missile Command became one of Atari's defining arcade releases and remains closely associated with trackball control, cold-war imagery, and high-score pressure. Its appearance on Slant Magazine's 2020 list of the 100 best video games reflects the original arcade game's lasting design influence.