According to the game's storyline, the United States is unable to respond to the attack directly due to the dismantlement of its nuclear arsenal.

[7] The final part of this stage involves destroying the missile silo while avoiding Soviet planes trying to shoot down the player.

[6][7] The game was first published for the Commodore 64 with Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari 8-bit computers, BBC Micro, and ZX Spectrum versions following.

[11] An Amiga port was finally released in 2020 by Reimagine Games, with programming by Erik Hogan who started from scratch to create this new conversion.

[18][19] Unauthorized copies of Raid on Moscow circulated widely in East Germany during the 1980s, despite the Stasi describing it as among those games having "a particularly militaristic and inhumane nature".

The West German Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons added the game to its index in 1985, stating that "In older adolescents, playing ... can lead to physical tension, anger, aggressiveness, agitated thinking, difficulty concentrating, headaches, etc."

[20] The game was shortly presented in YLE's current affairs television program A-studio on 13 February 1985 after being reviewed by the computer magazine MikroBitti.

[21][22] On 20 February 1985 the leftist newspaper Tiedonantaja published an article which criticized the review and called a ban on all similar "anti-USSR" games.

[21] Parliament member Ensio Laine (SKDL) left a parliamentary question for the Finnish government on the next day.

[26] Nevertheless, on 14 March 1985, the Minister of foreign trade Jermu Laine answered the parliamentary question, claiming that the Finnish legislation only allowed to restrict the importation of products that pose a hazard to health.

[27] Finally, the Minister of foreign affairs Paavo Väyrynen gave an official answer to the petition on 11 April 1985, expressing a friendly attitude towards the USSR and apologizing on behalf of negative publications about the country in the media.