It's a bit surprising that Missile Command has taken so long to make its way to the Xbox Live Arcade, especially considering the fact that far more obscure arcade classics such as Scramble and Gyruss have been available for a while. Missile Command quickly became a favorite when in first appeared in arcades in 1980 thanks to colorful graphics, fast-paced gameplay, and its trackball controller. While these factors were enough to make the game stand out nearly thirty years ago, they don't guarantee that it will stand the test of time.

For those new to Missile Command the game basics are pretty simple. Six cities and three missile bases are placed at the bottom of the screen and your task is to protect them from incoming missile attacks. The attacks come from the top of the screen in waves and you must intercept the incoming missiles with your own. Firing a defensive missile is simple enough; just point the cursor to where you want the missile to detonate and then hit the controller button corresponding to the base that you want the missile to launch from. The trick is that you need to fire your missile at the spot that the enemy missile will be when your missile explodes and not at the incoming missile itself. You also have a limited number of missiles at your disposal, so you need to try and take out multiple enemy missiles with a single shot.

Missile Command is by no means an easy game as the difficulty ramps up very quickly pretty early in the game. The first few levels don't cause much trouble, but after that the missiles begin to come in very fast and the time between the waves becomes smaller. This is the kind of game where you'll play again to try and beat your high score by 100 points rather than to see how far you can progress. In the Xbox Live Arcade version of the game things are made more challenging by the control over the aiming reticule. The original game used a trackball and PC incarnations of the game replaced this with the mouse without any trouble. However the Xbox 360's analog stick is not the best substitute for either of these. It makes the cursor feel slightly sluggish, which is enough to make life difficult for you on the faster levels. It can be quite a challenge to put up a layer of defensive missiles across the screen in time to catch the incoming missiles and you'll miss more than a few that come in on the other side of the screen from the cursor.

This version of Missile Command comes with an “evolved” version of the game in addition to the arcade original. I'm not really sure what's “evolved” about it outside of an update to the game's graphics. The cities have been made to look like crystal formations and the defensive missiles now travel along a lightning bolt to their destination, but the gameplay has been pretty much left untouched. It comes across as a knock-off version of the original more than anything else. The opportunity to add some new gameplay elements was completely missed and the look of the updated graphics completely changes the feel of the game – and not for the better.

I could recommend the game to fans of the original Missile Command, except that those gamers will find that they will have to adjust their techniques to account for the sluggish cursor. Those new to Missile Command may find that the quickly ramping difficulty leads to quickly increasing frustration and kills any motivation for returning to the game after the initial session with it. The disappointing evolved version doesn't help matters much either. You'll probably want to pass on it unless you're really dying to have Missile Command in your XLA collection.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 62%. This Missile Command is off target.