WHEN IT COMES TO EARLY GAME DEVELOPMENT, YOU HEAR A couple of different stories over and over again. Either it was an incredibly serious crew of people busting out some masterpiece of programming in their garage or it was driven by bong rips and hot tubs. Actually, sometimes it seems like most video games of the late 1970s and early 1980s are the result of a bit of both. That’s what makes Dave Theurer’s story so significant. The development of Missile Command was decidedly different than the other games of its era. It’s the first example of a game’s concept being “ripped from the headlines,” deliberately conceived to reflect the low-key panic of the Cold War in ways that, these days, might seem a little crude. But upon reading Alex’s reporting here and trying to put myself in the shoes of Theurer as he attempts to create what might be the very first video game with a message, it’s easy to see just how overwhelming this process could be.
Of course, I didn’t receive any part of Theurer’s message at first. I was five when Missile Command was completed and sent off to arcades, and the main message I received was “you are too young to handle a game with this high-precision trackball and three separate fire buttons.” I mostly stared at the cabinet as other people played because the flashing, cycling explosions that mark a player’s demise were some of the coolest-looking things in video games back then. Then I’d go off to play Galaxian or shake my head at the massive line of people waiting for their chance to play Pac-Man.
I connected with Missile Command when it came home. My parents, thinking that computers might be good for education, picked up an Atari 400 and before long, I had a home version of Missile Command at the ready. Here, the trackball was replaced by a standard joystick, and instead of having to deal with three separate missile bases, there was only one base and one fire button. I got pretty good, but it never really translated into any real skill at the arcade version.
Over the years, Missile Command remained a respected arcade game. A lot of games started getting remade or “remastered” in newer ways. A few attempts were made at making “new” versions of Missile Command, but they were universally lame. Attempts to reissue the original game were usually hamstrung by the lack of a good trackball-style control option, making it harder to appreciate these days. Also, the timing was all wrong. We were in a different era, and remakes released in a time where thoughts of nuclear destruction were firmly on the back burner could never resonate the way the game did in 1980. In the twenty-three years I’ve spent covering games, the ones that attempted to re-create the gameplay of Missile Command never got it right. As a result, Missile Command didn’t benefit from our long nostalgia boom the way franchises like Donkey Kong or Pac-Man have. It faded into the background as a classic that modern players wouldn’t really have a chance to connect with. I never spent much time thinking about it until the day a Missile Command arcade cabinet showed up on my doorstep. Someone was actually trying to throw it away, and we were able to rescue it just before it found its way into a landfill for good.
Of course, the cabinet didn’t actually work.
I’m no electronics wizard, but I can certainly blow dust, gunk, and spiders out of the inside of an arcade machine. After a thorough wipe down and some time spent carefully tapping the ROMs in the hopes that they just needed to be reseated into the PCB a bit, I lucked out. The machine fired up. Sure, the speakers were blown out and the monitor wasn’t emitting an especially clean signal, but it was still playable. Adding to the overall appeal of having one in my home is that it also happens to be a uniquely beautiful cabinet. The side art has a chunky, colorful style to it that evokes the era quite well. It’s also slightly shorter than a lot of other cabinets from the old days, which is something you’ll learn more about later on in the book. My Missile Command cabinet still needs some work, but even with a monitor that desperately needs servicing and blown-out speakers, Missile Command’s colorful graphics and fast action are bright enough to blast through nearly forty years of dust and decay. It’s a fantastic cabinet. I’m also happy to report I’ve finally gained enough dexterity to handle all three missile bases at the same time without panicking.
I’m also old enough now to see what Theurer was going for, and a how a game that might seem so abstract by today’s standards could haunt a person so thoroughly during its development. With today’s political climate bringing back some of those Cold War feelings from the bad old days and an increasing focus on labor issues and the “crunch culture” that is burning out some of modern game development’s brightest minds, Alex has chosen a fascinating time to look back at a game that dealt with those issues nearly forty years ago. I hope you get at least as much out of this look back at those early days as I did.
—Jeff Gerstmann
04/23/2018