Commanding a flotilla of three well-armed pods, you are solely responsible for defending six cities from a relentless, ever-escalating missile attack from space. Your three missile bases are armed with nuclear missiles capable of intercepting the incoming enemy nukes, bombers and smart bombs. One nuke hit on any of your three pods will incapacitate that vehicle. One nuke hit on any of your six cities will destroy it completely. (Hasbro Interactive, 1999)

It's a pretty game, but my disappointment in every version of Missile Command to come along since the original arcade version is vast. Not entirely for game play reasons, either.

In terms of game play, this Missile Command isn't bad, though the 3-D perspective can sometimes be a little confusing when you're trying to take aim. And the graphically spruced-up Classic Mode, which mimics the game play of the original Missile Command, only with graphics to compare to any modern-day game, is a real hoot.

My Missile Command misgivings come from the watering-down of the game's already paper-thin plotline. Dating all the way back to the Atari 2600 version of the game, the threat no longer comes from Soviet ICBMs, but from faceless alien attackers. What gave the original arcade game its gut-punch was its Cold War setting (perhaps the fact that the Cold War was still a reality in 1980 had a lot to do with it); in fact, Missile Command's original title was Armageddon, nixed by Atari's marketing as being a "big word" whose meaning no one would know.

I guess I'm accusing Hasbro/Atari of chickening out here. After all these years, and nearly a full decade after the end (at least in a titular sense) of the Soviet Union, and thus the Cold War...one would think that the game's original trappings could be restored.

In this day and age of games and movies where endless ammo clips are emptied into many a foe, I guess I'm hoping that someone would have the responsibility to show violence or warfare with consequences.

One more thing: you absolutely need analog controllers for the Playstation version of this game.

Rating:  Four quarters - a couple of minor irritants, but mostly a compelling and addictive game.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster

Look familiar? A shot from the intro.

The graphically-impressive Ultimate mode.

The somewhat simpler, but visually-updated, Classic mode.