Missile Command 3D

Missile Command 3D was developed by the British company Virtuality Entertainment and released for the Atari Jaguar in 1995. It is a modernisation of the famous 1980 arcade game Missile Command designed by Dave Theurer, and part of the revived-classics line Atari then called the 2000 series.

The basis is unchanged: you defend six cities against incoming ballistic missiles, shooting them down with anti-missiles, and you must predict where the blast will bloom, because the missiles are moving and you fire at where they will be. Missile Command was always a game about rationing limited ammunition across targets you cannot all save.

The novelty is that it offers three distinct modes: a faithful restatement of the original, a full 3D mode, and a so-called Virtual one. Reviewers at the time disagreed — the classic mode divided them, the 3D mode drew warmer comments, and some critics named the Virtual mode the best of the three.

The story behind it is the most interesting part. Virtuality had agreed with Atari to develop a VR headset for the Jaguar, and Missile Command 3D was its flagship title. The headset was ultimately cancelled over health concerns, leaving the game the only title ever compatible with a peripheral that never shipped. Development was finished with Martin Barlow as lead programmer.

Retrospective assessments are generally favourable, and in 2022 the game was included in the Atari 50 compilation. Treat it as one of the few reasons the Jaguar gets talked about at all — and as evidence of how early somebody tried to sell virtual reality to households.