Missile Command
Originally, it was an Atari arcade machine in
1980. It got ported to
the various Atari home platforms, 2600, 5200, 8-bit Atari computers. There were a few clones on British micros.
That was it.
In 1989, still in the Windows 2.0
era, Waid Reynolds made
Starbase. It was the first arcade game on Windows, and Missile Command would become probably the most
popular arcade concept on this platform. This may have something to do
with the fact that Missile Command is better fit for a point-and-click
interface than most other arcade games. On the original machine, it was
played with a trackball.
The short-lived boom of Missile Command clones may also have something
to do with the first Gulf War. There were lots of games somehow related
to that war in the early 90s. The theme—protect your cities against
missiles—certainly struck a nerve. Most of the Missile Command clones
for Windows are from 1991/92. Probably the last was the official port in
Microsoft Arcade.
I uploaded the five games below in short order. I wrote a
log entry
about them, which adds some details for two of the games.
| Missile Command Implementations |
 |
| Anti-Ballistic-Missile |
|
 |
| Starbase |
|
 |
| ABM Command |
|
 |
| Missile Attack! |
|
 |
| Missile Master |
|
 |
| Warheads for Windows |
|
|
