Missile Command was an arcade game designed by Dave Theurer and released in 1980 by Atari. The coordinates are on private property with permission from the owner provided you do not cross the bridge where the "private property" signs are. Bring a pen or pencil!
Missile Command was an arcade game in which the user must defend six cities from incoming waves of attacks from ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) using three anti-missile batteries. In later rounds, the missiles split into MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles).
The game was played by moving a crosshair via a trackball and pressing one of three buttons to launch a counter-missile from the appropriate battery. Counter-missiles exploded upon reaching the crosshair, leaving a fireball that persisted for several seconds and destroyed any enemy missiles that entered it.
When the game was originally designed, the six cities were designated Eureka, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego, but these were removed before production.
In 1981, an enhancement kit was made by General Computer, then located in Brookline, but now located here in Bedford under its new name GCC Technologies. The enhancement kit converted Missile Command into Super Missile Attack, which made the game even harder, and added a UFO to the player's enemies. The game was designed by Steve Golson, Chris Rode, Doug Macrae, and Kevin Curran. General Computer’s second enhancement kit was designed for Pac-Man and was turned into Ms. Pac-Man, becoming the largest selling arcade game in America.
The other reason for choosing this location for the Missile Command cache was that across the bridge from where you will be standing (please look, but do not cross) is the remains of a Cold War era explosives test range. It was used in the 50’s and 60’s by a defense contractor to test the effectiveness of new designs for hand grenades and other small bombs. All that remains is a tall cylindrical building with three-foot thick reinforced concrete walls with slits through the walls for measurement devices and cameras. I thought that this was a very fitting location to match the Cold War theme of Missile Command.
This cache is part of RetiredGuy's Classic Video Game Series of caches:
