Creating A Missile Command Clone in Scratch

I have been thinking about a mini-project that I could do in Scratch and thought a game would fit the bill perfectly.

My goals are that it should be relatively easy to follow, appeal to children (especially KS2 - that is, children from the ages of 8 up to 11) and be quite quick to produce.

For this project, as the title suggests, I have chosen Missile Command. Considered a game from the golden age of video arcade games, the basic idea is that there are missiles raining down on you like….rain, and you have to stop them destroying six cities that you possess.

At your command are three anti-missile batteries that you can use to thwart the deadly missile strikes.

Produced in 1980, you can imagine that the original graphics weren’t something to get too excited about compared to nowadays, but for this project, simple = easier (at least I hope so!).

It does have some really interesting elements though, namely, missiles which look like lines,  lots of noise, anti-missiles which look strangely like circles and a really simple storyline. Below, you can see a screenshot showing exactly what I mean.

So where do we begin?  Think of this rather like a table of contents (which will be updated over time) and something you can tackle a session at a time.

  1. Controlling and creating cross hairs.
  2. Adding a background.
  3. Bombs away.
  4. Adding enemy missiles.
  5. Adding scores and lives.
  6. Adding sound.

Hi! Did you find this useful or interesting? I have an email list coming soon, but in the meantime, if you ready anything you fancy chatting about, I would love to hear from you. You can contact me here or at stephen ‘at’ logicalmoon.com