MISSILE COMMAND

EASTER EGG: On game #13, end the game with 90 points scored or less (score no points during the round, and have 3 or less missiles left in your base).  The letters “RF” (for Rob Fulop) will appear in the right-most city (picture #1 and video).  {Tom Daley or Joseph Nickischer Jr.?}

Scott Stilphen confirmed Rob Fulop's claim that his initials were indeed removed in later releases (supposedly the 3rd production run), though they were put back in post-Warner re-releases.

Scoring trick - at the start, fire at missiles and press RESET before they explode.  You’ll get the points for it on the next game you play! (it takes perfect timing to do, but it can be done).

BUG: If you hit SELECT during a game, any missiles on-screen will continue to fall. {Scott Stilphen}

BUG: Any explosions above the left side of the missile base will have slightly distorted graphics on some of its edges (picture #2).  {Jens von der Heide}

BUG: Explosions at the lowest edge of the screen are slightly truncated, especially over the missile base.  Also, there’s a thin blue line at the very bottom of any explosions to the left and right of the base (from the right side of the 3rd city to the base, and from the base to between the 4th and 5th cities – pictures #3 and #4).  This appears to be a continuation of the little blue line on the top of the base.  {Scott Stilphen}

BUG: When you roll the (internal) screen counter once you get past screen 255, you effectively end up on screen “0” where the missiles will basically stop (actually moving very slowly).  They will slowly start speeding up again with each completed screen, and by the time you roll the score counter again (to screen 512), the missiles will be falling at the same speed they were on screen 1.  When you roll the counter a 3rd time (to screen 768), the missiles will again stop to a crawl.  This pattern will repeat indefinitely.

BUG: The Atari manual has a typo in the game play section on page 2 (picture #5); the correct text appears in the Sears manual on page 3 (picture #6).

BUG: The manual mentions (on page 6) that Wave 13 is the most difficult, but there are more than 13 waves (and those after wave 13 are harder!).  Was this done deliberately as a “clue” to the programmer’s initials being hidden in version 13?

FRYING: Get numbers or garbled characters on the top of the screen and the game starts by itself.  You won’t be able to move the cursor or fire (it will fire automatically) but the game will never end. {Scott Stilphen}

 

 

 


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