Reviews

Ocean’s version of the coin-op Missile Command. The programmer seems to have done most of Ocean’s early arcade copies before going on to better things (Antics, birds and the bees), and does a good job on this. The basic idea is you are in control of the defences of a row of cities under nuclear attack. Warheads reign down in vapour trails and you have to destroy them before they hit home. There is also a pesky satellite that drops extra warheads, and some of the missiles split up further down and cause more problems. This is a pretty good version all told although there are no missile bases on screen to be destroyed, just a limit of missiles. The graphics are pretty basic, but so was the original, and importantly the crosswire controls are quick and responsive so you can anticipate when you launch your missiles to catch the failing warheads. The games gets faster, and the colours of the screen and the missiles change through the levels. You have a finite amount of missiles and you get a new city at 10,000. Difficulty 3 out of 5, easily got an extra City. Overall very playable, easy to get into and easier to play than some of the others but also a bit less authentic and lacking the polish the Anirog version has. I like it because it’s the only version which retains the strategy aspects of the original where the missiles take time to reach their target so have to be planted ahead of the warheads, so for that and the better keys, I have this as the best version for the spectrum with the Anirog version probably better if you have joystick.

Armageddon (Ocean)4
Missile Defence (Anirog) 4
Armageddon (Silversoft) 3
Earth Defence (Artic) 3
Electro Storm (PSS)3
Repulsar (Softek) 2
Cruise Attack (Mikro-gen)2

1983 Ocean Software (UK)
by Adrian Sherwin

The best version of the arcade classic Missile Command, with a very suggestive name for the 1980's, with the nuclear race still fresh on the news.
This version is not only the most accurate but also the most playable and addictive. The first stages are very easy but then things escalate quite rapidly and the game gets very hard. There is a lot to improve even for 1983, like the coloring which is done a bit sloppy, the bright paper color on the background of the cities, for instance, which doesn't match the screen background color tone, but this doesn't detract the game from being very enjoyable.