MISSILE COMMAND ARCADE VIDEO GAME

 

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GAME YOU CAN PURCHASE THIS FOR ONLY $1280.00 PLUS

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Missile Command is an arcade game made in1980 by Atari.  It is considered one of the most popular video games from the past. When the game was originally designed, the six (6) cities were meant to represent six (6) cities in California:  Eureka, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and San Diego.

The objective of Missile Command is simple: the player's six (6) cities are being attacked by missile fire.  The player, serves as a regional commander of three anti-missile batteries, and must defend six (6) cities from total destruction.

To play the game, the player uses a trackball to move the crosshair across the sky background, and at the same time uses another finger to press one of three (3) buttons to launch a counter-missile attack from the appropriate battery. Counter-missiles explode as they reach the crosshair, leaving a fireball that remains for several seconds and destroys all enemy missiles that come near.  There are three (3) batteries, each battery has ten (10) missiles; a missile battery becomes useless after all its missiles are fired, or if the battery is destroyed by the enemy. Since the missiles of the central battery fly to their targets at much greater speed, they are the only missiles that can effectively kill a smart bomb at a distance.

The game has several levels that increase in difficulty.  Each level has a set number of incoming enemy weapons. The weapons attack the six (6) cities, as well as the missile batteries.  When a city is struck by an enemy weapon, it results in the destruction of the city or missile battery. Enemy weapons can only destroy three (3) cities during one level. If all cities are destroyed or when all enemy weapons are destroyed or reaches their target, the level ends.  When a player runs out of missiles, it no longer has control over the current level. When a level ends, the player receives bonus points for any remaining cities or unused missiles. Missile batteries are rebuilt and replaced between levels.  Any destroyed cities are rebuilt only at set point levels (usually 10 or 12K).

The game ends when all six (6) cities have been destroyed.  There is no way to "win" this game.  The game just gets faster and more missiles keep coming. This game seems to be just a contest to see how long the player will survive. At the end of the game, the screen displays "The End". If the player is able to score high enough to make the score list, the game will prompt the player to enter his/her initials, with the "The End" sequence skipped).

The game features an interesting bug that will prolong the game: Once a score of 810,000 is reached, a large number of cities are awarded (150 cities plus the continuing accrual of bonus cities).  At this time, a player can continue playing for several hours. At some later stage, the speed of missiles increases greatly for a few screens. On the 255th and 256th yellow screens, known as the 0x stages, the scoring increases by 256 times the base value. For skilled players, these two (2) 0x stages could earn over a million points, this enabled them to reach a score of approximately 2,800,000 (although only 6 digit scores were shown, so it would display 800,000) and at this point the accelerated rate would suddenly cease, then the game would restart at its original (slow) speed and return to the first stage, but with the score and all saved cities retained. Therefore it is possible to play this game for hours and hours.