June 27, 2000 – U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and his Russian counterpart Georgy Mamedov held closed-door talks in Oslo recently to discuss the launch of the United States' proposed National Missile Defense (NMD) system: a hi-tech web of radar satellites and ballistic missile stations that replaces the multi-billion dollar Reagan-era fiasco – Star Wars – as the Pentagon's favorite new full-scale defensive 3D video game. Apparently, Bill "we didn't mean to bomb the Chinese embassy in Belgrade" Clinton is having a hard time selling the idea to the Russians, who are being sticklers about the fact that NMD violates the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile treaty that limits the number and type of defensive missiles either country may install.

There are also murmurs of dissent coming from an independent Pentagon review panel skeptical that the system will operate successfully, especially by the 2005 deadline set by Congress and the White House. Meanwhile, gagging sounds were heard coming from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as federal officials tried to swallow the $60 billion price tag.

Beyond the din of a billion ringing cash registers and a thousand arguing politicians, are a few quiet engineers and weapons specialists camped out at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, busy creating what could be "the mother of all video games": NMD 2005.

The hi-tech warriors of today's Army probably never imagined in their teenage slurpee-swilling days playing Missile Command at the local 7/11 that one day they would get to do it for real but, if the White House has its way, the popular Gen-X arcade game of the mid-eighties will be a reality by the year 2005.

Of course, designers of NMD 2005 have made a number of improvements on the original Missile Command. The scenario hasn't changed much – players still defend helpless cities from a rain of nuclear ICBMs by launching interceptor rockets into the upper atmosphere – but NMD 2005 now features real missiles fired over actual cities and advanced X-Band radar is used to track the multiple incoming boggies.

While the rockets in the original Missile Command were mere tracers on a screen, NMD 2005 now features exoatmospheric warheads for big detonations at high altitude, and vector control so that computers can steer the interceptors in-flight in response to target movement.

Among the major bugs still being worked out by government testers is the fact that NMD 2005 has a major problem distinguishing which of the little incoming rogue dots on the radar screen are dummy balloons and which ones are nuclear bombs.

One excited tester was overheard saying "Sure the dummy balloons can fake you out, but I would just fan the sky with the old 'rapid-fire while spinning the tracking-ball' technique and try to forget that each finger tap is a quarter-of-a-million dollars."

Another favorite 3D video game currently under development at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico is THEL: a "tactical high-energy laser." This future hi-tech weapon will allow former arcade junkies cum field operatives to zap missiles and other moving targets out of the sky with high-energy bursts from a vehicle-mounted chemical laser weapon.

According to government officials, it can fire up to 60 shots without reloading, and is accurate at ranges under five kilometers. Though THEL developers (TRW, the US Army, and Israel's Ministry of Defense) are still in the early testing phases, they successfully downed a Katyusha rocket during tests on June 6.

Despite the fact that NMD 2005 and THEL could be the best things to happen to interactive gaming since PlayStation, many European governments, including Russia, don't understand why the United States is going to spend $60 billion dollars on a missile defense system that experts say may not work. They also argue that the "rogue attack" scenario is simply not realistic.

President Bill "I'm too young to remember the Cold War" Clinton seems eager to get Russian President Vladimir Putin's hand on the joystick. In an effort to entice the European Union into embracing NMD 2005, Clinton last week pledged that the US would openly share beta technology of NMD 2005 with its NATO allies, including Russia, in exchange for their consent.

Regardless of the greater European response, Clinton has made it clear in the press that the Army Corps of Engineers will begin pouring concrete for an Alaskan missile battery sometime this summer. When questioned about the legality of this maneuver in regards to the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty, White House representatives replied, "Well, technically speaking, it's not a missile installation unless there are missiles there." Knowing the White House, what constitutes a missile is probably still up for debate.

As of this writing, NMD 2005 developers are still trying to resolve a number of other bugs in the current operating program including how to create "extra lives" when players reach 100,000 points, and what exactly happens when the screen flashes GAME OVER.