By Bruce A couple of days ago I received a used copy of MISSILE COMMAND 3D. The cost
was $23 US plus a few bucks for shipping.
After the usual power-up scenes of the red Jaguar logo and rotating cube, you
see a 3D logo of the words "MISSILE COMMAND 3D" rotating in space.
MC3D is really three games in one cart. One is a reasonably close replica of
the original arcade version: an enemy has launched nuclear missiles at your
cities on the bottom of the screen. As the missile contrails streak down the
screen, you move a pointer to aim interceptor missiles at the incoming enemy
weapons. Each of the three fire buttons launches a missile from one of the three
ABM missile launchers at the bottom of the screen. The graphics are fairly close
to the original arcade. In the arcade a trackball was used to move the targeting
pointer: on most home versions of Missile Command the input must be done with a
joystick, leading to awkward aiming of your interceptors. The Jaguar version
seems to be a bit better than most for input, but is still a bit awkward.
There is an updated version called "MISSILE COMMAND 3D". It's the
original version with updated 3D polygon graphics. You have several cities and
three missile launchers at the bottom of the view. Arrowhead-shaped enemy
missiles arc down from the top of the playfield towards your cities. The general
feel is similar to the original version but with fancier 3D graphics. I find
'3D' has one extremely annoying problem: the entire playfield is about twice as
high and twice as wide as your actual 'view' window, so you must depend on using
the 'Defender-esque' radar screen to watch for missiles outside your point of
view. I'd much rather that the playfield was your entire view - even if some
graphic detail had to be left out.
I'd have been disappointed with this cart if it weren't for the third
'version' - "Virtual Missile Command". You have to protect an
underwater city that is surrounded by three laser-gun cannons. Missiles or bombs
drop down from the water surface above. Instead of firing interceptor missiles,
you shoot 'instant' laser beams directly from your point-of-view outwards to the
dropping bombs. The point-of-view seems to cover a larger playfield, so there
isn't the same desperate hunting-around to see the enemy missiles.
WOW! This game is incredible. I found the 3D polygon graphics of Virtual
Missile Command to be perhaps the best I've seen on the Jaguar. There are lots
of detailed polygons - both shaded and textured. The frame rate is decent, even
when lots of bombs and explosions are filling the screen. I'm extremely
impressed with the graphics of virtual - it compares very well with PSX or N64
games. If you ever see someone bashing the Jaguar for poor graphics, Virtual
would be a good game to show them. I find the 'boss' shoot-outs at the end of
each wave particularly impressive.
The control input is actually not bad: this kind of a targeting game is
really meant for a trackball and not a D-pad, but the Jaguar controller still
seems to work okay.
The music and sound effects are good, but not outstanding. They don't really
seem to stand out or add much to the game.
I don't have anything negative to say about the Virtual MC game. At first I
thought it was a little too difficult, but once I got the feel of this game I
found that it was just the right difficulty to be hard but not too frustrating.
I'm impressed with MISSILE COMMAND; it has both good shoot-em-up gameplay and
shows off the Jaguar's graphics abilities. I would rate it an 8.5 out of 10.