It’s been 45 years since Atari originally released the iconic Missile Command to arcades (released in June 1980) and in all of that time, it’s the only iteration of the game to have graced arcade game rooms – until now. Alan-1 Inc., one of our sponsors here and local to me, have released the game, which they are debuting at California Extreme 2025 tomorrow. Let’s take a quick look into it.
Missile Command: Recharged – Background
It’s a little unusual that a game that was originally designed for arcades has seen most of it’s iterations and releases on consoles, but it is what it is. One could maybe stretch that Missile Command VR counted as a coin-op release, but that was so rare (not being available on every Virtuality system) that it is practically as good as unreleased, apart from the console version that was done on the Atari Jaguar.
Missile Command: Recharged has seen a couple of iterations on console, being the first of the “Recharged” series that the modern Atari released starting in 2020, then following up with a different version in 2022. This did change up a lot from the original gameplay, while also allowing for two player simultaneous play and power-ups.
Missile Command: Recharged Arcade
Naturally in our industry, us operators want to know in that instance: “What makes it different than the console?” As many of us know, just having a cabinet isn’t good enough to make a difference, especially from a $10 game.
Like they did with Asteroids: Recharged, Alan-1 has taken some liberties with the software and changed quite a bit here, to the point that I’d call it Missile Command: Recharged 2 if it were released to consoles. First, they’ve brought back the wave based gameplay, although in the last build I played, there was no pause in-between waves; they also have the DEFEND CITIES text, THE END screen, nuclear mushroom clouds when a city is hit, much better collision detection, and real trackball controls. There is also a kind of “superzapper” function now called The Alpha-1 Protocol (bonus points to anyone who knows what that is a reference to). Push “The Big Red Button” to use it, but note that there is some risk associated with it in that it has a cool down set to your missile bases being able to fire.
They’ve also added something that I don’t think has been in any version of the game before – a set of 7 waves take place within one of the 50 U.S. states and it cycles through them, with the last one being Washington D.C. Operators can choose which state is first, which most will probably set it to their own so it gets seen (or, you can set it to another so that you have customers playing to find it).
There are still some of the same things that you saw with the console version, as far as the power-ups (some behaviors have changed on them, but it’s fairly minor), unlimited ammo with a cooldown timer, most of the look, and the music goes. But, if you would put both games side-by-side, it would be obvious that the arcade version is superior.
Challenges that are in the console version have been integrated into the game after the wave 6 boss fight, and there you do have limited ammo.
Like with Asteroids, the cabinet is really beautiful in person. It’s covered from head-to-toe in comic book style artwork, heaving on the oranges, yellows, and purples. It also has the wind & rumble effects integrated into it. As of this time, there are only two models – the PRO and the PRO+, the only difference between them being the RGB LED T-molding that uses high quality, addressable LEDs. It looks pretty sharp.
There is a full media kit for it, here. As a quick note, they are not implemented yet, but I have been pushing for adding secrets into the game. I’ll keep pushing for them until they’re there, as I think that’s something that arcades lack.
One last thing about it is that the game is available at a great price – slightly lower than Asteroids was. The PRO is at $4,999 and the PRO+ at $5499. They are also running a “show special” at CAX for even less, which is nice. As always, talk to your distributor about it – those are MSRP prices. It’ll be interesting to see how these earn, although I haven’t had the chance to test one quite yet to see for myself.
CAX 2025
As a final quick note, Alan-1 will be at California Extreme (CAX), with their full salvo of games… and one brand new, yet-to-be-revealed one. As well as that, some may have seen that last year they put on a tournament where the best player won an Asteroids Recharged arcade cabinet, and they are doing it again this time, but with Missile Command. This has been promoted better now, so I assume that it will see a lot more participation. If you’re there and curious, ask them about their “Grid Gauntlet” tournament; you can also read up on that here.
What do you think about Missile Command: Recharged Arcade? Would you like to see it at an arcade near you?
As a note & disclaimer, I have been involved in a consultancy role on this game and have been compensated for that by Alan-1.
