Missile Launcher

A heavy explosive projectile weapon featured as a high-damage armament across various retro action, shooter, and vehicular combat games.

Action

Simulation

Games

1990–2008

Years

Platforms

$21.28

Ø CIB

-11.4%

24M change

About

In the retro gaming landscape, the Missile Launcher serves as a powerful heavy weapon used to deal explosive damage to armored targets. It appears as a shoulder-fired weapon in run-and-gun titles like Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad and action-adventures like Jurassic Park (1993). It also functions as mounted heavy artillery in vehicular and mech combat games such as Metal Head, Shadow Master, and Monster Jam Maximum Destruction.

Across these diverse intellectual properties, the weapon's implementation evolved alongside gaming hardware. In the Game Boy release of 007 James Bond (1998), the item provides essential tactical firepower to overcome heavily fortified boss encounters. The weapon transitioned into multiplayer-focused arena combat with Turok: Rage Wars (2000), where its slow projectile speed is balanced by a massive blast radius capable of clearing entire rooms.

Within the high-tech military setting of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2000), the weapon aligns with the franchise's cybernetic themes, allowing players to lock onto and neutralize agile robotic enemies and armored targets. Similarly, in games associated with the Iron Man and Jurassic Park franchises, the weapon serves as a crucial tool for human characters to combat genetically engineered dinosaurs or high-tech battlesuits. This progression from flat 2D sprites to fully realized 3D lock-on systems demonstrates how developers utilized the weapon to scale difficulty and provide players with a satisfying sense of destructive capability against otherwise insurmountable obstacles.