![]() ![]() ![]() Maybe it didn't start off as a chaotic mess of explosions and desperate acts, but missiles drop faster and more frequently as you advance. Here was war in all its glory: not a neat and glamorous affair, but a sloppy series of violence and displays of power. The developers wanted to engage your imagination, to dredge up your despair and draw the fighting spirit out of you.Įven in the midst of battle, when splotches meet flashing dots, when rectangles crash into jagged piles, I see beauty. It's this empty, depressing atmosphere that caused me to dislike the game as a kid, and appreciate it as an adult. You are the only remnants of a civilization, and once the bases you're defending are toast your only existence will be in the pages of a history book. It's disquieting because you get the sense that you are it. There you sit, alone, vulnerable, no discernible geographic advantage, waiting in anticipation for those rockets to arrive. Most of the screen is wide open nothing: a blank night sky and a bleak environment. No, Missile Command is not easy on the eyes whatsoever, and yet somehow that's incredibly beautiful. Put all of them on the screen at the same time and it looks like a three-year-old's art project. It's not just that each piece is primitive singularly. It all plays out like a war in a remedial geometry class. Your survival relies on your ability to fight off the warheads by firing missiles of your own and creating giant "splotches" (read: explosions) in the sky to intercept oncoming missiles. Now and then an enemy cruiser, represented by a small basic rectangle, speeds onto the screen, threatening to kamikaze into one of your bases. Basic blinking dots drop from the sky, leaving jagged lines in their wakes. Jagged piles of pixels make up bases you must defend from oncoming missiles. The graphics haven't just "aged," but they're downright ugly. I knew the game had aged, but that didn't prepare me for what the minimalist visuals would stir in my mind. Missile Command caught me off guard, something few 2600 games do these days. You are the only remnants of a civilization, and once the bases you're defending are toast your only existence will be in the pages of a history book."Īpril, 2012. "No, Missile Command is not easy on the eyes whatsoever, and yet somehow that's incredibly beautiful. ![]()
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