Missile Command

Missile Command is a 1980 arcade video game developed and published by Atari, in which the player commands anti-missile batteries defending six cities from waves of incoming ballistic missiles, using a trackball to aim and detonate interceptors before the missiles reach the ground. Designer Dave Theurer has said the game's escalating, unwinnable structure, in which every city is eventually destroyed no matter how well the player performs, was influenced by his own anxiety about nuclear war during the Cold War. It is widely regarded as one of the most thematically distinctive games of the golden age of arcade games.