Atari has had an intriguing revival over the last few years, most excitingly with the fabulous Atari 50 documentary game, but also with interesting genre diversions like the WarioWare-esque Atari Mania or the Metroidvania attempt Yars Rising. This time they’re turning Missile Command into an adventure game filled with environmental puzzles and light deck-building with Missile Command Delta. It’s a wild swerve for a game that is usually operating in a quick-thinking real-time capacity, but the joint work of Nintendo-friendly devs (remember Runbow?) 13AM Games and Mighty Yell results in a fascinating game that tells a tight mystery of a story and is never really dragged down by the deck-building.

The hook is that you and three friends decide to venture into a long-abandoned defunct Cold War bunker on a dare but surprise - something happens and they’re thrust into a war. Or at least maybe they are; it’s not known at the outset because the door’s locked and they’re trapped here now. The adventure game elements are well written and focused. The other characters do a good job of pointing you in the right direction if you’re stuck, while also providing enough color to the world to make it more engrossing. All the notes you find become important, both in the narrative threads and figuring out various puzzles. A lot of what you do in these moments is finding a key card or how to access or open something. These were the moments where I occasionally got frustrated and stuck and would have appreciated some cleaner type of hint system. I am also, admittedly, a less experienced adventure game player.

All of that, besides the Cold Wars overtones, is extremely not like the gameplay of the original Missile Command. Where that part comes into play is in the turn-based tactical segments where you have to deploy different missile cards to blow up enemy missiles and defend bases. These are presented as computer terminals throughout the bunker and generally you have to solve a few in a row to unlock a key item or room to progress the story. Sometimes the game provides you with a prescripted set of missile cards you can deploy each turn. Other times you have to build your own deck from cards you found throughout the bunker. In small doses, I found these to be enjoyable, especially when the challenge turned from just surviving to figuring out how to best optimize your missile deployments. While I still enjoy these segments, they work best as breaks from the story and are more arduous when the game just more or less makes you brute force through a handful of them in a row.

What ties Missile Command Delta together is the overall mystery and with that, the game becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The turn-based Missile Command adaptation wouldn’t stand strong by itself, but combining that with the bunker exploration, endearing characters, and generally strong writing makes a fun adventure that will make you consider an arcade classic in a new light.