Missile Command

Missile Command is a 1980 shoot 'em up video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for arcades. It was released by Taito and Sega in Japan. The game was designed by Dave Theurer, who would also design Tempest for Atari the following year. The player uses a trackball to defend six cities from intercontinental ballistic missiles by launching anti-ballistic missiles from three bases. Missile Command was released in June 1980 during the Cold War, where it achieved widespread critical and commercial success. Atari then ported it to home systems beginning with an Atari 2600 conversion in 1981 by Rob Fulop. Numerous clones and modern remakes soon followed, and the version ported to Atari's 8-bit computers was reused for the 5200 in 1982 and built into the XEGS in 1987. It is considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time.