The player's six cities are being attacked by an endless hail of ballistic missiles, some of which split like multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles.

The game is played by moving a crosshair across the sky background via a trackball and pressing one of three buttons to launch a counter-missile from the appropriate battery.

Counter-missiles explode upon reaching the crosshair, leaving a fireball that persists for several seconds and destroys any enemy missiles that enter it.

Having found a picture of a radar screen in a magazine, Gene Lipkin, then president of Atari's Coin-Op division, tasked Steve Calfee, department head, to "Make me a game like this".

Dave Theurer, who was free after finishing Atari Soccer as a junior programmer, was offered the project, loosely defined as "radar screen showing missiles fired from the USSR toward the US, which is defended by the player".

[4] Because the project was requested by a boss, it was considered "high profile" and a junior programmer, Rich Adam, was assigned to Theurer.

As the deadline was approaching, the programmers started crunching heavily and Theurer suffered from nightmares of being destroyed by a nuclear blast.

(This rule was later named "Theurer's law" for being a famous exception)[4] Coin-op games had to go through early "field tests" where Atari would pay an arcade owner to place their prototype in the arcade for a few days so that the developers could observe player behaviour and reaction, find bugs and ensure the players were understanding the game and having fun.

The game was an instant hit but the extra indicator panel was distracting the player and taking their attention from the screen, thus was scrapped entirely.

[11] Missile Command was a commercial success for Sega in Japan, where it was among the top-ten highest-grossing arcade video games of 1980.

[13] In a retrospective review, Brett Weiss of Allgame gave the arcade version a perfect score of 5 out of 5, in terms of controls, frenetic gameplay, sound effects, theme, and strategic aiming and firing.

On level 13, if the player uses all of his or her missiles without scoring any points, at the end of the game the city on the right will turn into "RF" – the initials of the programmer Rob Fulop.

In an interview with Paleotronic Magazine, Fulop stated that Atari paid him for his work by giving him a Safeway coupon for a free turkey, which motivated him to leave the company and co-found competing developer Imagic.

On May 27, the remake also made it to Nintendo Switch as well as home computers via Steam,[21] later on released as a launch title on the Atari VCS.

[33] Two types of world records are monitored for the arcade version of Missile Command: Marathon and Tournament settings.

In 1981, Floridian Jody Bowles played a Missile Command arcade game for 30 hours at The Filling Station Eatery in Pensacola.

Bowles scored 41,399,845 points with one quarter using Marathon settings, besting the previous known record, according to Atari spokesman Mike Fournell.

[35] On July 3, 1985, Roy Shildt of Los Angeles set a world record in tournament-set Missile Command, with a score of 1,695,265, as verified by Twin Galaxies.

This score, as well it earning his induction into the Video Game Hall of Fame, were published in the 1986 Guinness Book of World Records.

Temple's score was published in the 2008 Guinness Book of World Records Gamer's Edition, although Guinness noted that the score was controversial due to Temple playing on game settings that increased cursor speed and was therefore easier than those of Roy Shildt, the previous record holder.

[37] Tony Temple increased his world record on two occasions, culminating in a score of 4,472,570[citation needed] in 2 hours and 57 minutes–verified on September 9, 2010.

In 1981 Steve Rakes played a 6.5 hour game without losing a single city, and at which time the machine malfunctioned expelling a small puff of smoke.