Missile Command 3D

By: The J Man

I've spent most of the last few weeks scouring Ebay for cheap Jaguar carts, and quickly noticed a trend. Atari had ransacked their back catalogue for arcade classics to release "enhanced" 64-bit versions of. I mean, I guess it makes sense. If I was Atari, and I had some legendary games and a new console, I'd probably put both to good use myself. It's the kind of logic that leads to this game - a 3-D version of Missile Command - and makes it seem like a good idea. They tricked me at least, and I was kind of excited at the prospect of an updated version of the arcade shooter. I should have taken a step back and a few deep breaths instead because, think about it, what about Missile Command is fundamentally 3-D? The answer, as rationale suggests, is "not much."

Missile Command was a classic arcade shooter with an original concept for its time. You operated three anti-missile silos inside mountains, with cities nestled in the valleys between. The Soviets, or space aliens, or whoever have decided to launch a barrage of ICBMs at your defenseless cities, and you must intercept them with your own. The arcade cabinet had a rolling trackball set in its center that you used to direct a cursor on the screen; like an early, giant mouse. You picked a point in space that the enemy missiles would cross and pressed a button corresponding to the closest silo. A missile would shoot up, explode when it reached the target point you selected, and the expanding radius would trigger any enemy missiles that flew into it. The idea was to pop off all the enemy missiles a safe distance from the cities, while not running out of your own anti-missile supply. Timing, rationing, efficiency, and multitasking when multiple missiles or MIRVs start falling from the sky, all became crucial to success. Considering the actual lingering threat of intercontential destruction at the time, the game was a tiny bit grotesque. But it was fun, and certainly memorable.

Not a good view for playing, but pretty cool.

A recreation of the original arcade game is the first option available on the cart, and it works reasonably well. The look of the arcade's multicolored missile lines is faithfully replicated, and the explosions sound about right. The D-pad pales in accuracy next to the arcade trackball, but the job gets done, and the 3-button Jag pad assigns perfectly to your three silos. The game does not naturally fill the screen, which I don't understand. Instead, you use buttons on the number pad to stretch the vertical and horizontal width to something you prefer. You can also press the 9 key and cycle through 3-D frames to contain the game screen. These are actually pretty neat, and include a TV, an arcade cabinet, and the Lynx. You can then use the stretching keys to zoom in or out and position the angle of the Missile Command playing device in 3-D space while the game chugs along without pause. It allows you to virtually recreate the experience of looking down at the screen of the arcade, or off from the side, or whatever suits your fancy. It has absolutely no gameplay purpose, and is simply Jaguar graphical masturbation, but it's still pretty neat seeing it live.

The second option is the titular Missile Command 3D. Here's where the game derails. It's a 3-D recreation of the 2-D game, while never leaving the 2-D plane. The D-Pad controls a fixed camera that can only look around and aim a cursor in its center. Polygon missiles fall from the sky and accost your polygon cities, but all on a flat plane at a distance from you; same as looking at the arcade screen. Think of it like a diorama - the pieces inside are undeniably 3-D, but you're not jumping in there and getting your hands dirty. The result is a sort of clunky graphical overhaul of identical gameplay.

This missile doesn't stand a chance.

The concept actually works to your detriment, as you have to move a camera to look up at missiles coming down, or around to see the different angles of your cities, otherwise there would be no 3-D effect. This means that the playfield extends far beyond your camera in enough directions to get the point across. While Missile Command was one static screen, Missile Command 3D requires you to pan around a field about 2-3 times larger than your screen to find the damn missiles. Missile Command already had a lot of factors and challenge playing into it; you really don't need to add "hunting for missiles" to that list. A radar at the bottom of the screen keeps you apprised of the situation and makes the game barely playable. A blue box moves around inside the radar and marks out the area that your camera can see. Missiles appear as yellow dots, and you must maneuver the blue box around these dots, then shift your eyes up to the main screen to mark the target area, then back down to the radar before a new batch of rockets can sneak up on you. There's a lot more pointing and shooting in this game than the original, and a lot of "you better be right the first time, but you can't stay and watch" juggling in later levels.

The playfield looks pretty nice, and the Jaguar crunches the polygons here without much difficulty. There's not a lot of detail though, and everything looks more like game board pieces than anything sharp and realistic. Cities in particular reminded me more of Monopoly hotels than recreations of sprawling urban landscapes. The missiles themselves are triangular shards and can be a bit hard to spot at just the right angle, though they trail smoke to help with tracking them. Backgrounds are some flat mattes of deserts that rotate well in relation to the camera, and the inclusion of rocky-textured polygon mountains in the foreground is a nice touch. No one would confuse it with reality, but the separation and linking of background and foreground with a midground is a step in the right direction. The lens flare as your camera passes the sun is another neat attention to detail. Explosions are marked by expanding and shrinking fire sprites, which look better than the arcade's spheres, but not particularly striking. No particle effects or anything of the sort, just shaded polys and 2-D sprites. It's nothing to sniff at, mind you, and it does match well against early N64 titles.

The game was ported to the PC at a closer-to-budget price, and contains graphically superior versions of both of these modes. It would unquestionably be the smarter version to get if you were interested, except for the final Jaguar-exclusive mode. Called "Virtual," it's far closer to the "Missile Command In 3-D" idea promised by the title. It was supposed to go hand in hand with the Jaguar's unreleased virtual headset (a piece of gear that was promised to be hella-awesome and that I drooled over in 1994) and contains a similar camera panning/aiming style as MC3D. The difference is that you actually play inside the virtual field, and command three towers arrayed around the cities you are to protect. Missiles can and do rain down upon you, and you must shuttle between the towers and manage your weapon power to survive.

Turns out defending underwater colonies is kinda fun.

It does make a difference, and is an interesting re-imagining of the Missile Command concept. Keypad keys cycle you through the three turrets, each of which gives you a different angle on approaching missiles. Turrets are armed with both lasers and missiles. Lasers put a fairly generic spin on the formula by giving you an instantaneous weapon to point and shoot at incoming attacks. Missiles are pods that shoot in the direction you aim with the A button, and are detonated by pressing the button again. It requires you to deal with the depth aspect I spoke of above, and is expectedly annoying. Without any way to gauge distance, you pretty much must wait until the pods become the same size as the enemy missiles you're targeting, and then detonate. I'm also not sure how expansive their blast radius is, since the 2-D explosion sprites make it impossible to tell. They further don't appear to be markedly stronger than the lasers. However, they do run off of a different charge, and you'll still have them as a backup once your lasers have been exhausted. Each tower also has different charge batteries for each weapon, further encouraging you to hop around towers while you wait for another's lasers to recharge.

Most of the graphical pieces from MC3D get reused in the Virtual game, most notably the cities, turrets, and missiles. Their incorporation is handled better though. You begin in an underwater environment, complete with shields over the interconnected cities, oxygen bubbles floating the surface, and a wavy screen effect throughout. The background art suggests light drifting down from the surface, and the rocky outcroppings have basic, shifting light effects that make them look suitably dim and murky. The speed maintained of multiple missiles coming down while the turrets smoothly pan around do more to differentiate this game from other polygon graphics of the time, like those of the Super FX chip. The texture work also makes it impressive for 1994 when compared to its competition.

It likely would have been more interesting if you could pan the turret cameras around with the VR helmet atop your dome, but as it is, this game is the most fully-featured of the three with the greatest longevity. You'll travel from the sea to the clouds and into space. Varying enemy craft and powerups intermingle with the ever-present missile attacks. Bosses appear and must be satisfyingly battled in stages. The only thing missing is a radar similar to MC3D, and you are required to look around and find all missiles yourself. Since you have the lasers for quick kills, this isn't much a problem.

To me, the Virtual game is "Missile Command 3D," and the others merely add value to the pack. Virtual is a nice Jaguar exclusive, and a fair amount of fun for a few rounds. Still, neither it nor the inclusion of the two other modes make the cart worth $50 then, or $50 now (you hear that Ebay?) If you really, really want an updated version of Missile Command, the cheaper PC version gives better graphics and better value. Otherwise, totally worth a cheap buy if you already have a Jaguar, but far from a must-play (or should I say, must-pay).

-reviewed 5/28/07 - game copyright 1995 Atari

Three versions of Missile Command. Impressive polygon graphics for the time, easy to control.

Missile Command 3D is a rather pointless update, offering little beyond its poly graphics. Virtual fairs better, but not at its current or original asking price.

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Missile Command 3D on MobyGames

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