Midnight Resistance

Copyright : Data East | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

I had never played this game at the arcades and until Robocop 2 hit the market on VHS I had never even seen the game running on an arcade, yes you can see the Midnight Resistance arcade running in Robocop 2 as Murphy slams the bent cops face into the display.

Anyway here is the basic story for this awesome platform game, your mother, fathers and younger brother and sister have been kidnapped by an enemy group who plan to blackmail you into submission or kill your parents if you do not do what you are told. Rather than do the smart thing you decide to dress up like Rambo and grab some millitary weapons and with the aid of a few friends you easily penetrate the enemy base you believe your family is being held captive in.

Cue a blockbusting video game that seriously sold well here in the UK and many of the stores in my region had a hard time getting new copies of this game in stock - yeah it was that good.

Graphics

Okay so the story is hardly original and many games after it followed the same kind of story, but the game itself is highly playable and very addictive indeedy.

The graphics in this CPC conversion are certainly well drawn but the colours could do with a shift around, it looks as if Ocean just grabbed one pallete for each level and stuck to it. The arcade suffered from a similar problem but at least they used more than one colour in different shades throughout the action packed levels. This is one game that actually looked better on my green screen CPC 464 because the colour certainly does not do such a great game justice.

Sound

Sound is much better than the graphics though as Ocean add sound to almost everything that moves and explodes in the game. I say almost because the jeep you drive into the first level is missing an engine and come to think of it so are the rest of the vehicles in the game, but things could be worse if another developer had there hands on this game. You are also treated to a computer tracked version of the Midnight Resistance theme and while it doesn?t pack as much punch as the C64 soundtrack it?s still pretty damned good.

Gameplay

As for gameplay well lets just say the Midnight Resistance isn?t the easiest game in the world and you would be hard pressed to try and find a cheat on the internet today. If an oncoming solider touches you, you?re dead, if anything else that moves on the screen touches you, you?re dead. There are no energy bars and this game was obviously made with the intention to be cruel to the players that can?t hack it. Controls are pretty simple though so you shouldn?t be struggling to do anything simple in the game. All in all the game could be worse and Ocean have done a pretty good job of converting this arcade classic.