Reviews View More
Played as part of Atari 50.
About as good as of a port as it could have ever reasonably been, but it's still vastly inferior to the original. The lack of trackball controls (and the overall slowing down of the game to compensate) and the narrowing of the 3 missile bases into one are to be expected but it's still a shame, given that losing both of them decreases the stress level a ton. The cleansing of the explicitly political Cold War themes of the original into just a generic space theme is really disappointing too, but it's not really that surprising. Definitely one of the better options for the 2600, but this was still deep into the era where even middle of the road arcade cabinets were dunking the fuck on top of the line home console games, and with the original Missile Command being one of the best cabinets from the era, there's really no contest here.
About as good as of a port as it could have ever reasonably been, but it's still vastly inferior to the original. The lack of trackball controls (and the overall slowing down of the game to compensate) and the narrowing of the 3 missile bases into one are to be expected but it's still a shame, given that losing both of them decreases the stress level a ton. The cleansing of the explicitly political Cold War themes of the original into just a generic space theme is really disappointing too, but it's not really that surprising. Definitely one of the better options for the 2600, but this was still deep into the era where even middle of the road arcade cabinets were dunking the fuck on top of the line home console games, and with the original Missile Command being one of the best cabinets from the era, there's really no contest here.
This 2600 port of the (less good) arcade game was seminal to console game design going forward. This is one of the few 2600 games that I can still lose hours to (the others would probably be Adventure and Yars Revenge). Also, that apocalyptic game over sequence still haunts me to this day. One of the most powerful "game over" sequences ever.
Playing Through My Evercade Collection Part 1: Atari Vol 1
Pssst - I think I actually find this port more fun than the original Arcade version. Turns out when you strip away some of the Arcade-releated quarter munching mean-ness and change up the controls a little to allow for smoother gameplay, you get something that feels a hell of a lot more fun to play. Its not that the original is bad either, this is just a little more palatable at times.
Pssst - I think I actually find this port more fun than the original Arcade version. Turns out when you strip away some of the Arcade-releated quarter munching mean-ness and change up the controls a little to allow for smoother gameplay, you get something that feels a hell of a lot more fun to play. Its not that the original is bad either, this is just a little more palatable at times.