Atari’s Missile Command Delta Reimagines the 1980 Classic, This New Gameplay Trailer Shows How

Back in 1980, Missile Command was the kind of game that could make you forget your quarters were running low. You hunched over an arcade cabinet, trackball spinning, launching anti-ballistic missiles to protect six cities from an endless onslaught of enemy warheads. Fast-forward to 2025, and Atari, alongside Canadian studios Mighty Yell and 13AM Games, has transformed this high-octane shooter into Missile Command Delta—a turn-based tactical game that trades reflexes for strategy and wraps it all in a mysterious narrative.

Set to launch on July 8, 2025, for PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam, this reimagining is less about muscle memory and more about outsmarting your enemies, both on the battlefield and in the story. The original Missile Command was a test of how fast you could react to incoming missiles, with a trackball and three fire buttons as your only tools.

Delta flips that formula on its head. Instead of real-time chaos, you’re now a commander in a decaying Cold War-era bunker, managing a finite arsenal of missiles to fend off waves of enemy attacks. Each missile has unique properties—range, explosion radius, and tactical effects. Think Into the Breach meets Slay the Spire, where information is your ally, and one wrong choice can doom your cities. The turn-based battles unfold on a hex-based grid at command terminals, where you analyze enemy patterns and deploy countermeasures with surgical precision. Speed takes a backseat to smarts, and that’s what makes it so gripping.


What sets Missile Command Delta apart from Atari’s earlier remakes, like 2020’s Missile Command: Recharged, is its narrative ambition. The game drops you into a retro-futuristic bunker, all flickering CRTs and dusty supercomputers, where you’re not just a faceless missile commander but a character unraveling a psychological thriller. Drawing from flicks like WarGames and 10 Cloverfield Lane, the story keeps you guessing: are you saving the world or stuck in a mind-bending simulation? Between missile launches, you roam tight, first-person corridors, cracking puzzles to open rooms, access terminals, and dig up secret files.




The developers are quiet about the plot’s specifics, but early previews hint at a tale of paranoia and betrayal. Dave Proctor of Mighty Yell teased that the story involves “a group of people not part of this bunker,” suggesting external forces or unreliable allies. Every document you find and every puzzle you solve adds to the sense that something’s off—are you a hero, a pawn, or something else entirely? This narrative layer transforms Delta from a strategy game into a mystery box you’ll want to crack open, one locked door at a time.