Clunky controls and quick death.
This game was one of Atari's quarter operated arcade machines, and was a quick quarter sucker if there was anyone stupid enough to play it. You are granted three bases and six cities per quarter. Missiles will rain from the sky towards these spots, and you have to send up your missiles to counter theirs. If hit, a city will explode, and a base will lose all its missiles.
The ball you play with makes it extremely hard to do precision aim, which you will need. The game starts out slow, easy, and fun. However, as soon as level three, things speed up and it starts to become impossible. Bombers will come in and drop bombs. Missiles will split apart into THREE OR MORE SEPARATE MISSILES. Keep in mind, as soon as a base is hit, its out until the next level.
My biggest problem with this game, is each base has a set number of missiles. Once launched, you can no longer fire from that base. And if a base is hit early, you may just run out of missiles and be forced to watch all your cities be destroyed. (which do not come back without another quarter by the way). There is also a gap which is too low for your missiles, so even if you can get your cursor there before the enemy missile hits, it is hopeless.
Overall, this game is just to hard to be fun. I think Atari made it that way (along with asteroids) so the machines would get quarters faster. After all, just look at how much easier the 2600 port is of both games. Thanks for reading!