So it’s 1980, and we’re all playing Missile Command, that brutally brilliant game by Atari featuring strategy, sacrifice, death and destruction. You know, according to legend, the game was originally going to be called Armageddon, but the marketing folks at Atari were worried that Armageddon was an egregiously multisyllabic term synonymous with mass-destruction(i.e. – they thought the word was too big and obscure to be a game title).
But what was the game about? Of that, there was absolutely no doubt. Soviet ICBMs raining death from the sky. And hey, even though those of us who grew up with Atari were too young to remember the bomb shelter days of the 1950s and 60s, we were around to witness Ronald Reagan’s verbally-shoot-from-the-hip presidency – the days of calling the Soviets an “evil empire.” The early 1980s were the days of Missile
Command, TV and magazine speculative articles on nuclear winter, and movies like Testament and The Day After. – Read the rest of the article here from Classic Gamer Magazine (courtesy of Old School Gamer)!
Be sure to sign up to get Old School Gamer
Magazine Digitally for free by clicking here!
